The Unbound Soul
by Mrs.InsaneOne
Summary: Ripped out of his world by an incomprehensible force on the night his parents died, young Harry Potter is cast into a world far different from that which he'd been born into. Bad luck and worse timing see the traumatized child falling into the hands of a man without scruples and his life is forever changed by the unethical experiments that are performed on him.
1. The Experiment

**Disclaimer:** _All HP characters are the property of JKR, the WB, and respective publishing companies and all Naruto characters are the property of Masashi Kishimoto. This is nothing more than a simple FanFiction that I have written. I have made no money from this or any of the other stories I have posted on this or other sites._

**Warnings:** _Mild to moderate violence, character death, alternate universe (i.e. kiss canon goodbye), OCC behaviors and personalities, a number of original characters and obscure canon characters to flesh out family trees, random chosen last names to give a number of characters surnames, and who knows what else._

**AN:** _This story is self-beta'd; so there may be occasional grammatical or spelling errors that crop up every now and then and for those I apologize in advance._

* * *

**The Unbound Soul  
**Chapter One: The Experiment

_October 31, 1981, 11:57 PM  
Godric's Hollow, England_

"Lily, it's him! He's here! Take Harry and run! I'll try to buy enough time for you to get the two of you out!" Dad's voice bellowed just seconds before Mum's arms scooped fifteen month old Harry James Potter off of the floor.

"Be careful, James!" Mum cried back as she began running for the stairs.

Frightened by the fear he could hear in his mother's voice, Harry twisted around in his mothers arms to stare over her shoulder at his father. As he watched, the door to the small cottage he'd lived in with his parents for as long as he could remember was blown open and a scary looking man with black hair, pale skin, and red eyes stepped into the house. Little Harry's eyes widened in fear as he watched his father step in front of the scary man with his arms wide open in an effort to block the man's path. Harry let out a cry of fright as the scary man cast a frightening green light at his father from the pale wand Harry could see in his hand.

"Dada!" Harry cried desperately as he watched his father fall to the ground the instant the green light touched him.

"James…" Mum sobbed as her arms tightened around Harry's body as she briefly stumbled on the stairs in her haste to reach the second floor; a trickle of blood coating her mouth from where she'd bitten her lip.

"Dada!" Harry cried again as his mother dashed into his room and slammed the door shut.

"I'm sorry, daddy can't hear you now, baby," Mum brokenly whispered as she kissed Harry's forehead; her tears soaking his hair and her bleeding mouth leaving a smear of blood on his forehead. "Mummy and daddy love you so much…"

Whatever else his mother was going to say was cut off when the door to Harry's bedroom was blown open by the scary man; who had followed them upstairs. Harry stared at the scary man that had hurt Dad and desperately clung to his mother as she stumbled backwards.

"Mercy, please, have mercy," Mum begged as she stumbled over his stuffed dog.

"Give me the boy," the scary man ordered.

"No, not Harry! Take me instead!" Mum countered as she spun around and roughly dropped Harry into his crib before she placed herself between Harry and the scary man.

"Foolish girl, stand aside!"

"No! Not Harry! Not my baby!"

"Get out of my way!" the scary man hissed as he raised his wand and cast a spell that threw his mother out of the way.

"Mama!" Harry shrieked in fright as he pulled himself up onto his chubby legs and stretched his arm out towards his fallen mother. "Mama!"

"Say goodbye, Harry Potter," the scary man stated as he pointed his wand at little Harry this time. "_Avada Kedavra._"

"No! I will not let you harm my son," Mum yelled as she scrambled up off of the floor and threw herself between Harry and the terrible green light that was rushing towards him.

"Mama!" Harry cried shrilly as he watched his mother's long red hair whip around her body as she spun about and fell down as the horrible green light washed over her.

"Foolish girl," the scary man sneered at his mother as he stepped over his mother's unmoving body before he moved deeper into the room and raised his wand at Harry once more. "It is time for you to die so that I might live to rule the world as I was born to."

Tears coursed down Harry's face as he dropped his eyes from the terrible green light rushing towards him to stare at his mother once more. His little fingers wriggled desperately as he again cried out a desperate, "Mama! Dada!"

His desperate cries called forth the spirit of his mother and her ethereal form threw itself in between him and certain death for the second time that night. A heartbeat later, little Harry's world exploded in pain as the green light knocked his mother's ghost into his body before it slammed into his blood smeared forehead. The fifteen month old screamed and cried in pain as he fell back onto his bottom while the terrifying green light was reflected back at the scary man by the remnants of his mother's magic that had clung to the blood on his face and to her ghost. An explosion rocked the room at the same time and Harry cried out a second time as a piece of flying debris cut deeply into his forehead.

He would scream a third time when a black shadow with red eyes rushed towards him. The shadow passed through Harry's body a split second later, stealing magic from his immature core, before it fled from the ruined house. In its passing, the shade left behind a small fragment of itself that burrowed deeply into the bleeding cut on Harry's forehead and latched onto his magical core in order to sustain itself. Harry had no idea what was happening though; he was too young to understand and all he wanted was for his mother and father to pick him up, hold him close, and kiss away his hurts like they used to.

"Mama," Harry called through his tears as he rolled towards the bars of his crib and stuffed his arm between two bars as he tried to touch her. The scuffing of a shoe on the floor drew Harry's attention back to the ruined door where he saw a man wearing a scary mask hovering nervously just outside of his door. The man pulled the mask from his face as he stepped into the room and walked up to the crying toddler. Harry recognized him and felt a measure of his fear recede as he reached his arms out to the man and babbled, "Wormy… Mama booboo… Dada booboo… Wormy help…"

"It would have been better if you had never been born," the man known only as Wormy to little Harry spat at the toddler as he ignored Harry's outstretched arms and lifted his wand. "If not for you, then they would not have had to die. It's your fault the Dark Lord killed them. It's your fault I had to betray them to my lord."

The man then pointed his wand at Harry and fired the same green light that the scary man had used. This time, when the light struck Harry, there was no pain as a gold light surrounded him at the last second and reflected the death curse back at its caster. Little Harry felt a rush of wind steal his breath away while his parents' voices whispered comforting words to him. The wind and his parents' voices soon vanished as the gold light flared bright white and burned hotly. The light and heat disappeared almost as quickly as they had appeared and little Harry found himself sitting in an unfamiliar place surrounded by giant trees and dark shadows.

Confused, frightened, in pain, and alone, Harry did the only thing he could; he cried.

* * *

_October 31, 0281 AtD through December 13, 0283 AtD*  
Konohagakure no Sato, Hi no Kuni_

Twenty-seven year old Orochimaru scowled as he stalked through the forest just outside of Konoha. He was frustrated over the poor results of his Kekkei Genkai experiments. It wasn't the growing number of lives that his experiments had claimed that frustrated him though; it was the complete lack of success that annoyed him. After spending the past decade researching Kekkei Genkai and human genetics, he had pieced together a method of implanting the genetic marker that would allow a person to use the Kekkei Genkai of whatever bloodline had been implanted within them.

He'd gone over his notes a hundred times and knew that the process should work but for some reason it wasn't working at all and over one hundred and thirty individuals had died as a result of each failure to date. He'd dissected each failure in the hopes of finding the key to making the new host accept the implanted genetic materials but so far he had found no clues as to why the integration was failing. The only information he had learned was that each of the one hundred and thirty-seven subjects he'd used in the experiments had died painfully as their chakra coils were shattered beyond repair after being altered to accommodate the new bloodline or when the implanted brainstem cells carrying the genetic markers were violently rejected by their body.

The constant failure was just so frustrating; especially when his initial experiments using lab rats and the dead bodies he'd recovered from various battlefields had shown such promise.

As he moved through the forest, Orochimaru toyed with the idea of abandoning the bloodline projects and focusing on another method of gaining the power he would need to complete his goal (which was mastering every jutsu in existence and becoming the world's most powerful shinobi); such as obtaining the eyes of an Uchiha. He was just contemplating his chances of kidnapping one of the Uchiha Clan's less impressive individuals when the forest was disturbed by a bright flash of light and a wave of intense heat. Curious, Orochimaru took to the trees and headed towards the disturbance. He paused briefly when he picked up the sound of someone crying before he began moving once more as he followed the sound until he came upon a bleeding toddler sitting in a circle of scorched trees.

The child fell silent the moment Orochimaru dropped down to the forest floor and began to approach the child so that he could get a better look at it. Based upon the color and style of the filthy clothes the child wore, Orochimaru guessed the child to be a boy. The child had wild hair that was black as sin, deep green eyes that would put emeralds to shame, skin so pale it would make a geisha jealous, and a jagged cut on his brow that still bled freely; the thin river of dark red bisecting the child's face and contrasting sharply with his pale skin. Orochimaru sneered when he drew close enough to the boy to sense the child's weak chakra network.

Orochimaru stared at the child while he weighed the benefits of alerting one of the ANBU Guards on duty to the child's presence or giving him a mercifully quick death by feeding him to one of his summonses. He had just decided to put the child out of his misery (the boy would be weak and useless due to how pathetic his chakra coils felt) when it occurred to him that such a young child might just be what he needed for his Kekkei Genkai experiments. After all, all of his other subjects had been older teens and young adults that he had taken prisoner during missions (since prisoners would be less likely to be missed than villagers) and they had all died.

Maybe using a young child, whose chakra coils were still flexible, as a test subject would increase the chances of the integration of a new bloodline being a success?

"It looks like tonight is your lucky night, little boy," Orochimaru murmured as he crossed the distance separating him from the boy and scooped him up in his arms.

The child immediately whined and began squirming in an effort to escape from his hold. Orochimaru scowled in response to the toddler's antics as he reached up and firmly pressed on key pressure points in the child's neck to knock him out effortlessly and painlessly. It wouldn't do to have the child draw attention to them as Orochimaru carried him back to his lab, after all; someone might whisk test subject number one-thirty-eight away so that he could be returned to his absent family or sent to the orphanage and raised as cannon fodder for the next war.

A mere twenty-two minutes later, Orochimaru deposited the unconscious child onto an empty surgical table within his lab's infirmary and promptly stripped him out of his soiled clothes. Orochimaru took a moment to strap the child to the table to prevent him from falling off should in the event that the child woke before he finished giving the boy a medical exam. Wrapping his hands in green healing chakra, Orochimaru began his exam with the bleeding cut on the boy's forehead only to discover that the cut had healed during the time it had taken him to transport the child from the forest to his lab; leaving behind a jagged scar on the child's brow.

"What a surprising little trick you have, little boy," Orochimaru stated as a predatory smile formed on his face. "It would appear that you are far more interesting than I originally thought you to be, child."

Over the course of the next four days, Orochimaru would subject the child to a full battery of medical scans and tests in order to get a clearer picture of the boy's current health. He took note of the child's blood type (AB positive), chakra nature (wind), any antibodies present in his blood (close to a dozen; all of which were unfamiliar), the sequencing of his D.N.A., and the current state of his chakra coils (chaotic, stressed, and collapsing). Additionally, he took extensive notes on the child's innate healing ability; which curiously did not draw upon the child's chakra like most healing abilities did.

During the entire testing process, Orochimaru was forced to frequently and repeatedly sedate the child so he wouldn't have to hear him whine due to the fact that he woke up far too often; something that both annoyed and fascinated him. If not for the presence of the child's internal healing ability and the potential it held, Orochimaru would have killed the little gaki in order to spare his ears from the child's incessant and incoherent cries each time he woke up. The Snake Summoner may enjoy making grown men and women scream but not even he could find joy in the wailing of a child.

Especially not when said wailing distracted him from his work.

Once he had run the final test and compiled all of the test results, Orochimaru began running several experiments on test subject one-thirty-eight's blood in preparation of introducing the D.N.A. from one of the many dead Kekkei Genkai users that he'd collected through the years. The experiments were needed to determine which Kekkei Genkai would be the most compatible with test subject one-thirty-eight's blood type and chakra affinity. He was also looking to learn how test subject one-thirty-eight's natural healing ability would affect the bloodline integration.

At the same time as he was running those experiments, he placed test subject one-thirty-eight on a very strict physical conditioning regime in order to improve the subject's overall health. The first problem he addressed was test subject one-thirty-eight's poor chakra network; flooding the child's weakening coils with a constant influx of chakra in order to forcefully expand and strengthen his coils. The boy was in constant agony for the duration of each session due to the subject's chakra coils being ruptured by the flood of chakra coupled with the gaki's growing resistance to the various sedatives used. If not for the boy's innate healing ability repairing the damage almost as fast as it occurred, the process would have killed him before the end of the first session.

Orochimaru was also pumping an assortment of vitamin supplements and enhancement drugs through an intravenous line in order to increase test subject one-thirty-eight's bone density, strengthen the child's core muscle groups, boost his brain activity, improve his circulatory system, and double the child's production of blood cells. The idea behind those enhancements was to prevent the boy's body from breaking beneath the physical stress that the integration procedures would place on the child's body. In conjunction with the enhancements, the dark haired shinobi had his most trusted underlings diligently stretch and exercise the child's core muscles to increase his flexibility and mobility.

It would take the snake summoner a full year to get test subject one-thirty-eight's body into what he considered optimum condition. Over the course of those twelve months, Orochimaru had also handled the other preparations necessary for the series of invasive procedures that would give test subject one-thirty-eight a Kekkei Genkai. Those preparations included; drawing and storing a significant amount of the child blood (to be used for transfusions during surgery and for additional tests or experiments), cultivating a supply of the selected donor's blood (also for transfusions), and preparing the various tissues and cells that would be transplanted.

During that time, he also had his underlings start collecting additional orphans to use in the experiments. His orders had been for them to take only those orphans that would not be missed; those that came from families outside of Hi no Kuni or those that were from civilian backgrounds with no records of the family carrying a Kekkei Genkai. Those children would then be put through extensive medical evaluations before they were put through the same conditioning regime that the first boy had undergone in order to improve their overall physical health and chakra networks.

At the end of the year, Orochimaru eagerly initiated the implantation process on test subject one-thirty-eight. The Kekkei Genkai that Orochimaru selected to use for the procedure was the Hyouton due to the child's inborn affinity towards wind (one of the two natures that made up the Hyouton). He would have preferred to integrate the Mokuton into the child but forcefully adding two additional chakra natures on top of a subject's inborn nature had proven fatal in earlier test subjects long before he reached the point where he'd started using living humans in his experiments.

The first procedure took twelve hours to perform and involved giving the child several bone marrow transplantations from the deceased donor (an adult male from the Yuki Clan in Mizu no Kuni) and a blood transfusion (containing both the child's blood and the donor's blood). The process involved injecting each of the boy's individual bones with the cells of the donor (the larger the bone, the higher the number of injections required). Orochimaru would then monitor test subject one-thirty-eight for a full week after the implantation to insure that the transplanted cells were not being rejected by the child's body; taking numerous blood and tissue samples twice daily in addition to x-raying the child's full body each evening.

At the end of the week, it was readily apparent to Orochimaru that the implantation had been a success; mostly due to the child's healing ability speeding up the integration of the newly implanted cells (a process that usually took months). Now that the child's body was producing blood cells that contained both the child's original D.N.A. and the donor's D.N.A., the Sannin began the next procedure; grafting sections of the donor's chakra pathways into test subject one-thirty-eight's chakra pathways. The process would take over seventeen hours as Orochimaru meticulously inserted uniform threads of tissue taken from the donor's chakra pathways into the pathways of test subject one-thirty-eight.

A second blood transfusion would be given at the end of the surgery; this time containing a combination of test subject one-thirty-eight's original blood, blood from the deceased donor, and a small amount of the blood the child's body began producing after the first procedure. Another seven days would then be spent monitoring test subject one-thirty-eight for any signs of degradation throughout his chakra network and recording any fluctuations in test subject one-thirty-eight's chakra production. After that second week of observation, Orochimaru was extremely pleased with the progress of the integration.

He would start the third procedure on the November sixteenth of two hundred eighty-two; grafting roughly one-fifteenth of the donor's chakra coils onto the subject's chakra coils. The five hour procedure was meant to increase the size of test subject one-thirty-eight's chakra reserves and introduce the Hyouton user's water affinity to the boy's system. The procedure was also the most critical stage of the Kekkei Genkai integration and the point at which eighty-seven percent of the previous attempts at integrating a Kekkei Genkai into a living subject had failed; the remaining thirteen percent had failed immediately after the fourth stage of the integration.

Once he'd finished performing the third surgery, Orochimaru would spend the rest of November closely monitoring test subject one-thirty-eight. Hundreds of tests were performed on the boy during that time and the results carefully recorded so that he could compare them to the results from earlier test subjects. The moment that he was certain that the third procedure had been one hundred percent successful, Orochimaru would spend another month reconditioning the child's body in order to bring his health back to where it had been prior to the procedures.

On January first of two hundred eighty-three, Orochimaru initiated the fourth procedure of the Kekkei Genkai integration on test subject thirty-eight; transplanting brainstem cells from the donor into the test subject to give the boy the capacity to use the implanted Kekkei Genkai on an instinctive level. Once the procedure was complete, Orochimaru selected thirty-four of the sixty-eight orphans that his subordinates had kidnapped on his orders and sent them through the first three procedures with the help of a handful of his trusted underlings during the twenty-one days that he spent monitoring test subject thirty-eight's response to the brainstem implantation.

At the end of the three week period, Orochimaru was pleased with the results of test subject one-thirty-eight's most recent procedure. On the other hand, he was greatly frustrated by the deaths of test subjects one-thirty-nine through one-seventy-two; not a single one of those thirty-four children had survived the third procedure. The snake summoner would spend the remainder of January away from the village and his lab, leaving the care of the remaining orphans and test subject one-thirty-eight to his underlings.

When he returned to Konoha on the thirty-first, Orochimaru was no longer quite so frustrated with his failures and instead focused on the child that was promising to be his first success. After spending time away from his lab, the man had come to the conclusion that test subject one-thirty-eight's inborn healing ability was the key factor in why the child had survived where all others had died. With that knowledge, Orochimaru decided to integrate the boy's healing ability into the remaining orphans using the blood and tissue samples that he'd taken from test subject one-thirty-eight prior to initiating the first procedure on the child.

That process would take the better part of six months and only fifteen of the thirty-four orphans being used in the experiment would survive the implantation of test subject one-thirty-eight's cells. Out of those fifteen survivors, seven of them would gain a weaker internal healing ability while the other eight only received a slight boost to their immune systems. All fifteen of the survivors would then be prepared for the first three procedures of the Kekkei Genkai integration project.

During that time, test subject one-thirty-eight was receiving another around of chakra therapy sessions; this time his chakra network was constantly flooded by the water natured chakra of two of Orochimaru's subordinates to shock the child's system into producing water natured chakra in addition to his inborn wind natured chakra. He was also being subjected to a ruthless physical therapy regime to prepare his body for the final procedure which would activate the newly implanted Kekkei Genkai. The newly implanted Hyouton would then be activated on July thirty-first of two hundred eighty-three.

Immediately upon activation, test subject one-thirty-eight was encased completely in ice and Orochimaru had at first believed the experiment had failed yet again and that test subject one-thirty-eight was dead. He left one of the medics that worked for him to monitor the remains and inform him the moment the ice melted so that he could perform the autopsy to determine just what had gone wrong. Exactly one hour after the activation of the implanted Kekkei Genkai, the medic he had left watching over the dead child informed him that the ice formation containing the child had melted and that the child yet lived.

Orochimaru was shocked to learn that the boy very much alive and relatively unharmed after spending an hour frozen solid. After arriving in the lab, he had stared at the child in disbelief for a full minute before he shook off his stupor and hurried forward to scan the child for injuries and potential medical complications that might have resulted from the turbulent activation of the Hyouton.

The day immediately after the successful activation of number one-thirty-eight's implanted Hyouton, Orochimaru would start the first implantation procedure on the fifteen surviving orphans using cell cultures from the Shodai Hokage for his Mokuton. On a whim, Orochimaru would include test subject one-thirty-eight; the nearly twenty-nine year old Jounin was curious to know if it was possible to integrate a second Kekkei Genkai and drunk on his first success after years of constant failure.

There was also no denying that the mere possibility that he could create and control the only person capable of using every known Kekkei Genkai in the world appealed to that part of him that craved power. And if he should finish and perfect the jutsu that would allow him to transfer his soul into a new body as a method of granting himself a form of immortality, having such a powerful individual from whom he could breed an unending supply of powerful replacement bodies would be invaluable.

He would lose nine of the children after the third procedure; leaving only test subject one-thirty-eight and six of the stolen orphans that had gained a weaker version of one-thirty-eight's innate healing ability. The next two weeks would be spent observing and testing all seven children. Once it was clear that the latest integration had taken, Orochimaru spent another four weeks restoring their physical condition back to optimum health to increase the chances that the fourth and final integration would be successful.

After the fourth implantation failed in five of the seven children, Orochimaru put off integrating the brainstem cells of the Shodai in test subjects one-thirty-eight and one-eighty-one (the last remaining orphan with the integrated healing ability) for another four weeks in order to study the remains of the failed test subjects. At the same time, he sent both remaining children through another series of tests and administered two extra blood transfusions (containing the Shodai's blood and subject one-thirty-eight's original blood) to increase the percentage of the Shodai's and subject one-thirty-eight's original D.N.A. circulating through both boys.

It was just one day shy of the two year anniversary of the day Orochimaru found the emerald-eyed boy in the forest when the Snake Summoner ordered both boys to be prepared for their final surgery. Orochimaru would personally perform the stem cell transplant in test subject one-thirty-eight (due to it being the boy's second implantation) while two of the more competent medics on his staff performed test subject one-eighty-one's implantation at the same time. Both surgeries were completed within minutes of each other. Over the course of the next seven days, both children would be monitored around the clock for any signs that the procedure had failed once again.

Elation filled Orochimaru once it became apparent that both implantations had been successful and he didn't hesitate to collect all of his research notes in order to compile a proper journal on the method he'd used so that his work could be well documented for future projects. He even began making plans to start gathering new test subjects so he could start another round of experiments as soon as he could comb through all of data he'd collected from the failed experiments and compared it to the two successful experiments in order to determine why those two children had survived when the rest of the children had not.

At the same time, he had both boys subjected to chakra therapy sessions to expose them to the newest chakra nature that had been integrated into their bodies; earth for number one-thirty-eight and water for number one-eighty-one. He would leave his underlings to monitor the progress of the two children while he reveled in the feeling of accomplishment he felt over the three successes (the Jounin counting the dual implantations in subject one-thirty-eight as separate instances) and turned his attention to a couple of his other projects.

After a mere five weeks of chakra therapy, Orochimaru made a critical error when he allowed his irritation over Sarutobi's politely worded refusal to name him as his successor (his sensei claiming it would be unwise to change the village's leadership while Konoha's relationship with Iwa was so rocky) cloud his mind. Frustrated over the apparent snubbing and rather impatient to see the positive culmination of a decade's worth of work on his Kekkei Genkai project, Orochimaru moved the activation of test subject one-thirty-eight's second Kekkei Genkai up by six and a half months.

The first indication that something had gone terribly wrong came when the boy began whimpering and thrashing about wildly in pain beneath the straps that held him to the table; something that had not happened during the activation of the child's Hyouton. Orochimaru had only a split second's warning in the form of a sharp spike of chakra from subject one-thirty-eight just before hundreds of ice spikes snapped into being around the boy as he began screaming; the man barely dodging back in time to avoid being skewered. The child's scream soon rose in pitch as the icy spikes grew leaves that immediately froze solid before crumbling into dust.

Orochimaru retreated from the room at that point in order to save himself as more leaf bedecked spikes of ice began forming in an ever widening ring around the child. Another spike of chakra heralded the end of Orochimaru's shinobi career in Konoha as a large tree woven through with veins of ice burst forth from the center of the leaf riddled spires of ice surrounding the child and shot straight through the roof of Orochimaru's underground lab. Knowing there was no way that the village's ANBU on duty wouldn't notice the strange tree growing inside of the village and that there was no time for him to destroy all of the evidence of what he'd been doing, Orochimaru hurried away from the lab rooms to gather his most prized possessions and as many of his notes as he could.

Behind him, test subject one-thirty-eight's scream abruptly cut off as the child's undiscovered magic clashed violently with his chakra on the heels of the conflict between the three chakra natures and the two Kekkei Genkai that now resided within the child's body. A violent conflict that had been triggered the moment Orochimaru forced the activation of the child's implanted Mokuton. At the same time, the boy's forehead split open to pour forth blood and thick black tar when the hidden soul fragment that had lodged itself inside of the child two years earlier died due to that same conflict.

* * *

_December 13, 1983, 7:14 PM  
Headmaster's Office, Hogwarts Castle_

Albus Dumbledore was sitting at his desk reviewing the student progress reports for the fall term when the small device that was monitoring the life force and magic of the missing Harry Potter began whistling shrilly. Albus smacked his knee on his desk when he jerked his head up and half turned to stare at the device in horror. The second his eyes fell on the device, the whistling sound was cut off as the silver instrument was suddenly engulfed in ice crystals. Albus was just rising out of his seat when the ice shattered as a small, grotesque tree took root in the center of the instrument and destroyed it completely.

The elderly wizard fell back into his chair in shock even as tears of sorrow and despair filled his eyes; the destruction of the device monitoring Harry Potter could only mean one thing – Harry Potter was dead. His thoughts were soon filled with the memories of the night that the young Potter heir had been orphaned.

_He had barely finished preparing for bed after spending four hours going through the paper that had piled up on his desk when four of the devices monitoring the life forces of the members of the Order of the Phoenix had sounded an alert. The aged wizard had rushed back towards his office the moment the first device had let out the loud tolling of a church bell that indicated someone had just died and reached the room at the same time as the second device activated. It had taken him less than a minute to locate the two devices in question and he'd let out a curse the instant he discovered that it had been James and Lily Potter that had just been killed. _

_He'd barely drawn his wand in order to alert the rest of the Order when the device monitoring the Potter's young son let out a wailing siren; indicating that the young boy had just been injured. He had immediately lamented over the fact that his phoenix companion had just gone through a burning day and was therefore unable to fetch the child for Albus and bring him to safety. Shaking off the useless emotion, Albus quickly cast the communication variation of the Patronus Charm to alert the Order. His phoenix patronus had barely left his wand before the last device had begun tolling out the death of Peter Pettigrew; a close friend of the Potters. Albus's gaze flicked towards the silent devices monitoring the life forces of Remus Lupin and Sirius Black before he sagged in relief when he noted they were both silent. _

_A mere twenty minutes after the first device had alerted Albus to the attack, the Potters' home was swarming with people searching for the small family of three. Tears of grief and anger would be shed over the bodies of James and Lily Potter when they were recovered from the wreckage. The discovery of Peter Pettigrew's dead body in full Death Eater regalia at the scene of the attack (in what had formerly been little Harry's nursery) raised hundreds of questions. Sirius Black had needed to do some fast talking to avoid being accused of being Pettigrew's accomplice and the reason that the Dark Lord had found the Potters as Black was supposed to have been the Secret Keeper. _

_Evidence that Voldemort had been defeated (in the form of the Dark Lord's ruined robes and slightly charred wand) would see the wizarding world rejoicing and hailing the missing Potter child as their hero. Unfortunately, there was no sign of little Harry to be found and many believed he had died that night. Albus Dumbledore knew the child yet lived the same way he'd known that James, Lily, and Peter had been killed that night; through the monitoring charms he'd created for every single member of the Order of the Phoenix. _

_A nation wide search would be initiated by Albus and the surviving members of the Order of the Phoenix. Sadly, no trace of the child had been found over the next two years and the device monitoring the child's life force had often sounded a warning alarm to indicate that the boy had been seriously injured time and time again. Not even Fawkes had been able to locate the missing child. There had been many days when Albus wished he'd thought to tie a tracking charm onto the monitoring devices so that he could have used it to hunt down the missing child but it had been difficult enough just to link the monitoring charms to the devices. _

As his thoughts returned to the present once more, Albus bowed his head as the knowledge that the loss of the Potter's son would be a huge blow to the still recovering wizarding society filled him. He then winced as he imagined how Sirius and Remus would take the news that their missing godson (honorary in Lupin's case) had perished. Worry flittered through the venerable wizard just split seconds later as he began to wonder exactly how the child had died and who was responsible for the terrible deed; his eyes flickering to the rotting mess that had been made of the child's monitoring device.

Grim determination filled him a heartbeat later as he got up to vanish the remains of Harry Potter's monitor. He then transfigured an exact replica out of a piece of parchment and enchanted it to function the same way that the original monitoring device had. Once that was finished, he set about making plans to find a child to replace the lost hero in order to protect the world he loved. No one would ever know that Harry Potter had died; not if he could help it.

Albus shoved aside the guilt and grief that filled him the moment he reached that decision; he couldn't afford to have a conscience when the fate of the world rested so heavily on his shoulders.

* * *

At the exact same moment that Harry Potter's life force monitor was destroyed, deep within a foreboding forest in the wilds of Albania, the sleeping shade of Lord Voldemort and the rat he was currently possessing woke up in excruciating agony. The shade and its host soon let out a piercing scream that frightened a nearby group of muggle teenagers that had been camping in the forest and further fueled the rumors that the forest was haunted. Just seconds after giving voice to his agony, Voldemort's shade and the rat it had been hitching a ride on froze solid before a small tree growing out of the rat's heart killed them both through the link that had bound the shade to the soul fragment that had attached itself to Harry Potter.

The phenomenon would be repeated on an old diary stored in a hidden room within Malfoy manner, on a golden cup locked up in a vault deep beneath London, on a silver and emerald locket stashed in a curio cabinet in a gloomy old house, on a gold ring holding a mythical stone secreted beneath the floorboard of a rotting shack, and on a tarnished diadem stashed within a hidden magical room filled with thousands of lost and forgotten junk.

All five objects destroyed beyond repair and the magic that they had once held forever lost.

Harry Potter had unknowingly fulfilled the prophecy that had tied him to Lord Voldemort without lifting a finger; a fact that no one would ever discover.

At the same time, the thin Thread of Fate that had tied the last Potter to the world he'd been born into shattered beyond repair and the young wizard's future was set adrift outside of Fate's Pattern and therefore outside of Fate's Control.

* * *

**Translations:** Japanese to English

Gaki – brat  
Hi no Kuni – Fire Country  
Hyouton – Ice Release  
Iwagakure (Iwa) no Sato – Hidden Rock Village  
Kekkei Genkai – bloodline limit  
Konohagakure (Konoha) no Sato – Hidden Leaf Village  
Mokuton – Wood Release

**Notes: **

Okay, just a few notes here.

First up, I am not a medical professional and my portrayal of the process that Orochimaru used to transplant the Kekkei Genkai into Harry and the other unnamed boy who survived (and I'm sure most of you who are familiar with the Naruto verse already know the identity of that other boy) is entirely made up based upon what I imagined one might need to genetically enhance a body to give them a Kekkei Genkai. I researched as much as I could to make my plot sound realistic enough to pass muster (in my own head at least) but I'm sure there will be some readers that are dissatisfied. For that I apologize but I'm not going to go back and change anything because I already put a lot of work into this story.

Next; an explanation about what exactly happened to Harry at the end of the chapter and what it will mean for him will be given in bits and pieces throughout the story. Also, I feel that I should point out that the HP universe won't play much of a role in the rest of the story from this point forward, though there may be an occasional reference to what is happening in that world. So no, Harry will not be going to Hogwarts and none of the other HP characters will find him in Konoha. I already wrote a story using that kind of plot line and I wanted something slightly different for this one.

That brings us to the Horcruxes &amp; Voldemort's shade. In this story, I used the concept that Voldemort's horcruxes are anchors made from small pieces of his soul that tie him onto the mortal plane; meaning that he has to be connected to each and every one of them for the anchors to have held him in the land of the living. That also means that he was connected to Harry through the accidental horcrux and the moment Harry's magic spiraled out of control against his chakra, the backlash that created the ice riddled tree would have affected Voldemort and through Voldemort, the rest of his horcruxes. The same would apply to Dumbledore's monitor device – since the device was linked to Harry's life force (his chakra) and his magic.

Lastly, I just wanted to remind all of my readers that I will be playing fast and loose with canon (for both verses, though we won't see much of the wizarding world now that the prophecy has been fulfilled) because Harry's presence in the Elemental Nations is going to cause ripples of change. He isn't going to go out of his way to fix everything that is wrong or save every single life but his actions, thoughts, and words will have an impact on those around him. There will also be quite a few OOC moments for all of the characters because of the effect that Harry has on them and they on him. If that bothers you, then you might want to avoid reading any further.

* AtD – Stands for After the Divide and it refers to the moment when the Rikudou Sennin split the Juubi into the nine Bijuu just before he died. To me, it was a more logical starting point for the time line than the founding of Konoha since I can't see the other villages wanting to constantly recall the fact that Konoha had been the first hidden village (at least I think it was the first village – I could be wrong on that). All of the hidden villages have their pride, after all.

* * *

**11-14-15:** _Minor edits made to chapter to fix spelling/grammar mistakes and removed unnecessary author's notes._


	2. The Discovery

**Disclaimer:** _All HP characters are the property of JKR, the WB, and respective publishing companies and all Naruto characters are the property of Masashi Kishimoto. This is nothing more than a simple FanFiction that I have written. I have made no money from this or any of the other stories I have posted on this or other sites._

**Warnings:** _Mild to moderate violence, character death, alternate universe (i.e. kiss canon goodbye), OCC behaviors and personalities, a number of original characters and obscure canon characters to flesh out family trees, random chosen last names to give a number of characters surnames, and who knows what else._

**AN:** _This story is self-beta'd; so there may be occasional grammatical or spelling errors that crop up every now and then and for those I apologize in advance._

* * *

Chapter Two: The Discovery

_December 13, 0283 AtD, 6:51 PM  
Konohagakure no Sato, Hi no Kuni_

Forty-seven year old Sarutobi Hiruzen, the Sandaime Hokage of Konoha, jerked his head around towards the northern window of his office when he felt a large (if weak) wave of chaotic chakra wash over him. He scrambled to his feet in shock two seconds later when his eyes landed upon the twisted tree that was rapidly rising above the small forest in the general vicinity of the empty Hattori Clan Estate. A shinobi in a black uniform with pale grey armor over top and a beaked porcelain mask painted with stylized purples feathers on the outer edges appeared in a swirl of smoke at the Hokage's side just seconds later.

"Report," Hiruzen demanded crisply without bothering to look towards the masked man.

"Our squad was patrolling the wall above the northern gate when we sensed a small spike of chakra from the outskirts of the abandoned Hattori Estate. A second, larger chakra spike was felt mere seconds before the strange tree burst forth from the ground accompanied by a shockwave of corrupted chakra. Upon investigating the base of the unnatural tree, we discovered an underground base before the fast-growing tree blocked our view. The tree itself is riddled with veins of ice, unnaturally twisted, and carries the same underlying chakra signature as the shockwave."

"Gather another four squads and a team of medics and have them meet me at the base of the tree," Hiruzen ordered as he striped out of his Hokage robes to reveal that he was wearing a set of battle armor underneath the shapeless robes that denoted his position as the village leader. He then dug his helmet out of his desk as he dropped the robes onto the chair he'd been sitting in just moments earlier before he left his office.

Fifteen minutes later, Hiruzen dropped down from the rooftops to land beside the now unmoving trunk of the unnatural tree alongside twenty-four masked ANBU Guards. A tall man with spiky white hair and red 'tear tracks' running from his eyes, joined him beside the tree just a couple of minutes later.

"It looks like a bastardized version of the Mokuton, sensei," the white haired man commented as he crossed his arms and shifted slightly to his left as his right foot scratched at his left calf. "Any idea who might be responsible for growing such an abomination?"

"No, but that is why we are here, Jiraiya," Hiruzen grimly replied as he nicked his thumb on his eye tooth and ran through the series of hand seals needed to summon Enma; the king of the Monkey Clan and his personal summons.

A man-sized monkey with white hair and beard wearing armor that was near identical to the armor that Hiruzen was wearing appeared in a puff of smoke and glanced at Hiruzen for a brief moment. The Monkey King then turned his attention to the unnatural tree that had appeared without warning. King Enma grunted out a curse under his breath before he growled, "That tree is fueled by the pain, blood, and chakra of a child whose chakra coils have become twisted with corruption. Who did this, Sarutobi?"

"That is what we're here to find out, old friend," Hiruzen answered for the second time as he formed the seals for a doton jutsu to split the ground open at the base of the ice riddled tree.

As the ground yawned open to reveal the hidden underground facility that the bird masked ANBU had spoken of, Hiruzen signaled for four of the five squads that had gathered at his request to enter the base and start searching for the person or persons responsible for the unnatural tree. Hiruzen would follow alongside of King Enma and Jiraiya next; leaving the original ANBU Squad that had been on patrol and the team of ANBU Medics that had answered his summons to stand guard over the area. A brief sweep of the tree-filled room revealed it to be empty of life aside from the twisted tree and Hiruzen quickly moved towards the only door leading out of the room.

Once outside of the room, Hiruzen and King Enma split away from Jiraiya to cover more ground as they headed deeper into the underground facility. The more Hiruzen saw as he moved through the hidden base, the more disgusted he grew as it became apparent that someone had been experimenting on humans. Experimenting on _children_. He almost could not believe the depth of depravity that had been hidden beneath his beloved village for who knew how long and his anger burned brightly as he continued to search for the perpetrator. When he finally did find the one responsible, Hiruzen froze in shock and disbelief as he gazed upon his favorite student; Orochimaru.

The Sandaime was so shocked that after a short exchange of words between him and his student, Hiruzen allowed Orochimaru to walk away instead of capturing or killing the man; as he'd originally intended to do to the one responsible for the wanton deaths and immoral experiments he'd stumbled upon while traveling through the underground labs. The problem was that Hiruzen had long considered Orochimaru as one of his sons and learning that the young man he saw as family and a potential successor could become so twisted without him even suspecting was a harsh blow to the venerable shinobi.

Hiruzen remained frozen in his place until one of the ANBU guards that had been stationed outside of the facility hurried to his side with urgent news; two survivors had been found amidst the wreckage of the labs. Snapping out of his shock, Hiruzen quickly dismissed King Enma before he followed the boar masked shinobi back the way he'd come until they reached the surface where two ANBU Medics were tending to a pair of children that couldn't have been a day older than three or maybe four. The forty-seven year old briefly eyed the now half-melted tree before he dropped his gaze to the two children that had been pulled from the labs.

"Where were they found?" Hiruzen inquired, his voice shaking with both anger and shame as his eyes continued to bounce between the two children; his heart aching for the two small children that had undoubtedly been sorely abused while in Orochimaru's clutches.

"The first boy was found three rooms down from the tree room; he was hooked up to a number of hospital machines that were monitoring his vital signs and brain activity," the boar masked ANBU answered from beside the Hokage. "A search of the room turned up medical records for the boy dating from June eighth of two hundred-eighty-two. The child's records indicate that he was part of two experiments; the first one involving the internal healing ability of an individual identified only as test subject one-thirty-eight and the second one dealing with the Shodai Hokage's Kekkei Genkai."

"What is that child's status?"

"Mostly stable and merely sleeping with the help of a sedative, Hokage-sama," the medic working on that boy replied without looking up from his patient.

"And the other child? Where was he found? Did his medical records indicate that he had been part of the same two experiments?"

"We found no records of the second child," the boar masked shinobi replied after a brief hesitation.

"And where was he found?"

"Inside of the tree, Hokage-sama," the female medic tending to said boy stated as she briefly glanced up from the black haired child. "About the same time the first boy was found and brought to the surface, we noticed that the veins of ice on the strange tree were melting. It was the sound of the boy's weak sobs that led us to him; he was trapped under a twisted surgical table at the heart of the tree. He was also covered with blood and an unfamiliar substance that looked and behaved like tar; only it smelled of death and decay."

"What is the child's status?"

"Critical; he is suffering from severe chakra exhaustion, has extremely high levels of at least three unknown drugs in his bloodstream, his entire chakra network has suffered numerous ruptures, his chakra has become corrupted, and his heart is in cardiac arrhythmia."

"Was there any indication that the child could have been responsible for the appearance of the tree or was he merely trapped inside of it?"

"The boy's corrupted chakra signature is identical to that which was felt from the tree as it was growing," the bird masked ANBU that had reported to the Hokage earlier stated from where he was standing guard by the now dying tree that had grown out of the ground roughly eighty-five minutes earlier.

"Transfer both boys to the ANBU Infirmary the moment they are stable enough to move and place a twenty-four hour guard on their room; visitors are restricted to their assigned guards and the medical staff until I say otherwise. In the mean time, get a squad back down in that room and have them comb every square inch of it for any information on what was done to the second child. Samples of the tree will also need to be taken so that it can be studied for clues."

"Wakatta, Hokage-sama," all five ANBU members gathered beside the tree stated in unison before the boar masked individual disappeared back through the hole beside the half dead tree while the two medics prepared their patients for transport.

Hiruzen remained until the two children were moved per his orders. While he was waiting, Jiraiya returned to his side to inform him that the base had been secured and that four prisoners had been taken into custody before he asked if the person responsible had been identified. Hiruzen acknowledged the information he'd been given before he'd reluctantly informed his student that it had been his teammate. Jiraiya spluttered out a few half-hearted denials that Orochimaru could have had any part in the atrocities that had been committed inside of the hidden lab before he cursed and took off; the younger man obviously determined to hunt down his teammate to get answers.

Hiruzen let him go as he kept his eyes on the two children until they were carried away.

He then slowly made his way back to his office as he tried to come to terms with what he'd learned that evening. When he finally reentered his office, the first thing he did was write out an order for Tsunade (his third student) to report to the ANBU Infirmary to treat the two children that had been found amongst the wreckage of the underground base. He then wrote out the painful order that would label Orochimaru, his prized student and unofficial third son, as a traitor. The old shinobi ignored the icy cold tears that slipped down his cheeks as he signed the order and stamped it with the official Hokage's seal.

Both scrolls were then handed to an ANBU Guard to deliver to their intended recipients and Hiruzen wearily rested his elbows on his desk and buried his fingers in his hair as he struggled to understand just where and when things had gone so wrong. At the same time, memories of the years he'd spent training Orochimaru, Jiraiya, and Tsunade played through his mind; taunting him with happier times. Interspersed amongst those once fond memories were the images of the two near broken children that had been found inside of the underground laboratory.

* * *

_December 16, 0283 AtD, 8:39 AM  
Konohagakure no Sato, Hi no Kuni_

The child once known as Harry Potter had known nothing but pain, fear, and darkness since the day he'd been found in the forest by the cruel man right after his tiny world had been destroyed by the scary man and a man whose name he no longer remembered. He had cried, screamed, and begged for the pain to stop with each breath he'd taken every time he'd opened his eyes until he realized that there would never be an end to the pain. He'd fallen silent shortly after that terrible revelation and his memories of his first life with his parents faded and disappeared until they were forever lost to him bar a few tiny tendrils that were more impressions than memories.

The memories of his new life would eventually blur together into a seemingly endless cycle of pain, darkness, grabbing hands, and the annoying sound of beeping coming from the unfamiliar machines that surrounded him. Part of that was due to the three and a half year old unconsciously repressing his memories to protect his mind from the torment of the various procedures that he was put through. The rest of it was simply due to his mind being far too young to fully understand exactly what it was that was being done to him by the men and women that were constantly swarming around him.

The only exception was a crystal clear image of Orochimaru smirking or occasionally scowling down at him each time the pain blossomed once more. Orochimaru's face would fuel the boy's darkest nightmares for many years. That image would also one day be the driving force behind his greatest dream; to become strong enough to protect his loved ones and to get revenge upon the one that had hurt him. The faces of the other people that had helped Orochimaru would be forgotten because they hadn't been the ones smiling or scowling down at him in his memories of the pain he'd felt each time he woke from the darkness.

Over time, the pain he had been subjected to had slowly grown muted as the child's forgotten magic slowly deadened his pain receptors in order to help him survive the ordeal. By the end of his second year as Orochimaru's prisoner, his level of pain tolerance had risen to the point that he no longer felt the bite of the needles that drew his blood and administered drugs, medicine, and daily supplements. The only true pain that he still felt was the burning pain he had learned to associate with having another's foreign chakra forced into his body. It was a burning pain that he felt as a relentless bone deep ache that was far easier to ignore than the crippling pain that he had initially felt during the chakra therapy sessions throughout his first year as part of Orochimaru's experiments.

It was therefore something of a traumatic shock to the nameless child when he felt a lance of sheer agony shoot through him as the cruel man scowled down at him for what would be the last time for many years to come. The boy that had come to be known as test subject one-thirty-eight soon felt like he was being torn apart from the inside out as his chakra attacked itself immediately after Orochimaru had given him a shot of the heated liquid he vaguely remembered from when the man had turned his chakra into ice several months earlier. The moment that his long forgotten magic entered the battle, the pain had gone from agonizing to crippling.

The pain had quickly grown to the point where the child couldn't breathe. Seeking an escape, the child had pushed all of his chakra (and his forgotten magic) out of his body in a desperate attempt to stop the pain and almost immediately he felt the world around him grow cold. There was another spike of pain centered over his heart just before the iciness intensified as the dry earth chakra that had been introduced to his body asserted itself over the wet water chakra while the chilly wind chakra that he'd been born with struggled to wrest control of the water chakra from the earth chakra and his magic attacked all three.

Shortly after that, he felt his forehead burst open at the same time as it felt like his insides were melting. The battle had raged for a seeming eternity before the two separate energies merged into a single energy just seconds before he would have died; his sentient magic realizing the danger at the last second and acting upon its need to survive at all costs.

The new energy that had been formed was neither chakra nor magic and at the same time it contained properties of both chakra and magic, carried traces of the magical abilities that he'd been born with, and had retained the elemental properties of wind, water, and earth. At the same time, the child's new merged chakra and magic would be viewed as corrupted chakra by those who were sensitive to the changes his magic had wrought on his chakra when they merged.

Once the merging was complete, the pain that the young boy had been feeling abruptly lessened. The small child sobbed in pure relief while his body throbbed in remembered pain as exhaustion slowly pulled him back down into the darkness that had been his only source of comfort during his time with the cruel man.

The next time the child woke, he found himself staring up at a white ceiling instead of the reddish brown ceiling that had greeted him every time he'd opened his eyes since the day he'd been found by the cruel man. He stared up at the bright ceiling and blinked repeatedly as he tried to figure out if the new ceiling was real or if it was just his imagination. When the ceiling didn't change or disappear after several minutes, the boy turned his head towards the door that faceless men and women always entered and exited through when they came to torment him only to find another bed with a small person on it instead of the expected wall and door.

It was also at that point that the child realized he could no longer hear the noisy machines. Shortly after that revelation, he discovered that the straps that had bound him to the lab table for as long as he could remember (bar those times when his body had been stretched and pulled by the grabbing hands of the faceless adults) were also gone. That discovery soon consumed his entire attention as he raised his left arm so that he could stare at his hand. His right arm soon followed and he marveled over the feeling of actually moving his small limbs by himself as he stared at both hands in complete and utter fascination; much like a newborn infant just discovering its hands.

Subject one-thirty-eight had no idea how long he'd been enthralled by the sight of his hands moving under his own power when his attention was drawn away from the rediscovered appendages by the sound of a door opening. Rolling his face towards the sound, the child's deep emerald eyes soon landed on a pretty woman with long blonde hair tied back in two ponytails, rich honey colored eyes, and lightly tanned skin. The woman briefly paused in mid-step when her eyes collided with his before she began walking once more and the boy's breath caught in his throat as she reached his bed.

Memories of the endless pain that had been inflicted upon him by all of the adults that he'd encountered since his capture had the child flinching sharply and tightly shutting his eyes the moment he saw her reaching her hands towards him. His muscles tensed at the same time and he weakly knotted his hands in the soft blanket he hadn't even realized was draped over his small body as he braced himself for the inevitable pain. His eyes soon flew open in confusion once more when instead of the expected pain he only felt a warm hand press down on his forehead just seconds before he felt the gentle warmth of healing chakra wash through him to sooth the lingering ache that he had been ignoring since he'd woken up.

"Are you in pain, child?" the woman questioned the moment she noticed that his eyes were open again. Number one-thirty-eight shook his head twice as best he could with the woman's hand pressed against his forehead like it was. "I suppose that is something. Will you tell me your name?"

The child had no idea how to answer that question since, as far as he knew, he never had a name. Orochimaru and the other adults had never called him anything but test subject one-thirty-eight, after all. So the child remained still and silent as he continued to stare up at the woman's face.

After a long stretch of silence, the woman let out a soft explosion of air and pursed her lips before she muttered, "I'll take that as a no. Do you even know what your name is, child?"

The new question was far easier to answer since he believed that he didn't have a name and so subject one-thirty-eight simply gave another two shakes of his head. The woman's eyes closed briefly as the soothing flow of healing chakra faltered for a moment before stabilizing once more. When she reopened her eyes, she looked tired as she asked, "Do you know how old you are?" His answer was another negative shake of his head which drew another explosive sigh from the woman as she moved her chakra coated hand from the child's head to his chest before she demanded, "Do you even know how to talk…?"

The boy tipped his head slightly to the left as he considered the question. It had been a long time since anyone had been interested in hearing his voice and even longer since he'd voiced any sound but whimpers, whines, and screams. He knew he could talk; he just didn't want to talk. So he nodded twice to answer the question instead of giving her a verbal reply.

"Right," the woman grumbled before she sarcastically asked, "Let me rephrase the question; are you ever going to talk or are you just going to nod and shake your head in response to my questions?" The child just shrugged his shoulders in response before he cringed when the woman glowered at him; he'd learned very quickly that angry adults equaled more pain. "Are you trying to be difficult?" Subject one-thirty-eight quickly gave two negative shakes of his head even as he tried to shrink away from the woman. "You're a right stubborn gaki, I'll give you that. Are you hungry?"

The boy just stared at the woman without answering that question. He'd been hungry for so long that he no longer felt the hunger that had once clawed at his belly. Since the day he'd been found by Orochimaru, he'd been fed intravenously with a special mixture of nutrients, vitamins, and minerals; not a single morsel of food or sip of water passing through his lips.

"Tch, you're as annoying as you are stubborn; though I don't know why I'm surprised. I'll have the nurse bring you up something light after I leave. I don't suppose there is anything you'd like to ask me?"

The small boy hesitated; there were hundreds of questions he longed to ask, things he desperately wished to know. At the same time, he was frightened of what he might learn if he actually asked those questions. Being confronted by the unfamiliar woman after waking up in a strange room didn't help because he had no idea what was happening or when the others would return to hurt him again. After another minute of silence, he just shrugged his shoulders listlessly and gave a single shake of his head.

"Is that because you don't have any question or because you just don't want to talk?"

This time the child hunched in on himself as he shrugged his shoulders yet again. The woman rolled her eyes in exasperation but didn't pester him with any more questions as she finished scanning him with the medical jutsu she'd been using. She then straightened up and propped her hands on her hips as she studied him again before she glanced towards the other bed that the child had briefly noticed earlier.

"What about you, do you have any more questions for me?"

"No," a quiet voice replied and subject one-thirty-eight twisted around to find the small person he'd seen earlier sitting up on the other bed watching him and the woman with brown eyes that were so dark they looked black.

"Well I suppose I should be happy that you at least give me verbal replies to my questions. How are you feeling today? Are you still in any pain?"

"I'm okay."

"If you do feel any pain, please let one of the nurses know so that they can give you something to stop the pain."

"Okay."

"Did you wish me to have the nurse bring you your breakfast when I send her in with the gaki's meal?"

"Yes, please."

"Alright, I'll see the two of you tonight after supper then," the woman stated as she headed towards the door without looking back at the two boys.

Number one-thirty-eight ignored the woman's departure in favor of studying the other boy; the first person he ever recalled seeing that was as small as him. The other boy studied him just as openly in return. Eventually, the emerald eyed child grew bored and shakily pushed himself up into a seated position for the first time in years so that he could look around the room. He'd barely taken in the white walls, the shiny floors, and plastic furniture before the door opened once more to admit another woman carrying two trays.

The new woman was wearing a pale green, shapeless uniform that one-thirty-eight would quickly learn to associate with medics and a matching green hat that she'd stuffed her long, dark brown hair up into. She wasn't quite as pretty as the blonde lady but she also wasn't nearly as grumpy; the new woman offering a cheerful smile to both boys the moment she looked up and saw both of them watching her.

"Ohayou, little ones."

"Ohayou," the dark eyed boy replied while one-thirty-eight held his tongue and eyed the woman warily; smiles almost always meant more pain for him.

"Please eat as much of your soup as you can, boys," the woman instructed as she set one of the trays onto a hospital table and shifted the table down and over so that the tray with a small bowl of thin broth was situated over one-thirty-eight's lap. She then looked right at one-thirty-eight and asked, "Do you need any help eating?"

One-thirty-eight automatically shook his head no and the woman gave a noncommittal hum in response. The woman then moved around the bed to deposit the second tray on another table for the other child before she left the room. One-thirty-eight stared after her until he could no longer see her before he glanced down at the bowl in front of him. He then lifted his gaze to peer at the other child as he heard a soft slurping sound fill the room. As he watched, the brown haired boy drank straight from the bowl of soup he'd been given; spilling several drops down the front of the thin cotton hospital shirt he wore.

After watching for a few more minutes, one-thirty-eight attempted to mimic the other boy. He would end up spilling more than half of the broth out onto the tray and over the thin shirt that he was wearing before he managed to actually taste the soup. An explosion of unfamiliar and long forgotten flavors against his tongue caught the boy off guard the moment he took that first sip. The intensity of that first taste woke a desperate hunger inside of the child and a heartbeat later he was guzzling down the rest of the liquid.

His stomach wanted to rebel against the invasion of liquid; the first such liquid it had held in over two years and the child whimpered softly as he dropped the bowl, wrapped his arms around his tummy, and curled up into a ball as he tried to ignore the gurgly tightness in his stomach while he pressed his lips tightly together to stop himself from throwing up. He would fall asleep shortly after that due to the fullness of his stomach making him drowsy and content despite the slight upset; two feelings he had long since forgotten existed.

One-thirty-eight would be woken up by a warm hand shaking his shoulder several hours later and he gave a soft whimper-whine and curled up tighter because he didn't want to wake up and find himself strapped to the cold metal table in the dark room again. A soft laugh and a second shake had him starting awake and the emerald eyed child was soon staring into a pair of deep blue-green eyes beneath a mop of mint green hair that stuck out all over the place.

"You are such an adorable little thing, child," the man declared with another laugh. "Come on and sit up for me; I need to change the sheets on your bed and get you into a clean set of clothes."

The boy reluctantly sat up and soon felt himself lifted up off the bed and he tensed up at the unfamiliar sensation of being held in another person's arms. He was set down on a chair two heartbeats later while the man maneuvered a small table in front of him before placing a tray holding another small bowl of soup down on the table.

"Drink your soup, child," the man instructed warmly as he turned away from the child and quickly stripped the bed before he deftly slipped on a clean set of sheets and another pale green blanket.

The boy watched the process for a moment before he turned his attention to the bowl in front of him. His mouth began watering the moment he scented of the tantalizing aromas rising from the tolerably warm broth and his stomach gave out a small growl. This time he only spilled a quarter of the soup down the front of his shirt; his hands and arms still a little uncoordinated because of how little experience he had of moving them about on his own.

He'd barely set the empty bowl back down on the tray when the man was whisking table and tray out of the way and lifting one-thirty-eight into his arms once more as he praised, "Very good, child. Let's go get you out of those dirty clothes and get you washed up before we put a clean set of clothes on you."

The child was uncertain what to think of being properly bathed for the first time in two years. He disliked the slightly slimy and gritty feel of the soap that the man used to scrub him and the water used to rinse him off was uncomfortably warm. He definitely hated the way the water made his eyes sting and the way it clogged up his ears when it slid down inside of them each time water was poured over his head. He felt more than a little relieved when the man announced that he was finished before he dried him off and dressed him in a clean set of what he had learned were hospital pajamas.

One-thirty-eight was then carried back out to the bed he'd woken up in and tucked back under the covers. The boy would soon drift off back to sleep once more as the overly friendly and cheerful man moved to wake up the other boy so that his bed could be remade while he ate lunch before he too was washed and dressed in clean pajamas.

Test subject one-thirty-eight woke up a third time after several hours had passed and he lay perfectly still as he stared up at the ceiling. He was feeling rather frightened and at the same time desperately hopeful. The fear he felt came from the expectancy that one of the faceless ones would appear any minute now to bring back the pain. Yet, despite the suffering he had endured for the past two and a half years, there was a small part of the child that remained untouched and untarnished. It was that part of him that hoped that he might never see the cruel man again, that he could stay here in this bright place forever.

The child would be pulled from his daydreaming by the arrival of the green-clad woman that had delivered his first bowl of soup that morning. He perked up a bit when he immediately noted that she was once again bearing two trays of food and one-thirty-eight hurriedly sat up in anticipation of experiencing yet another meal. The woman smiled at him in response and quickly set him up with his tray of food; which held a quarter cup of what he'd later learn was green tea in addition to the small bowl of broth.

"Are you feeling better now, little one?"

One-thirty-eight tentatively nodded in response to the question even as his little hands shot out to wrap around the bowl holding the soup. He was extremely proud of himself when he managed to drink the soup without spilling a single drop this time; his arms already feeling stronger from the practice he'd had during the first two meals. Once he finished the soup, the emerald eyed child turned his attention to the cup on his tray. He let out a near-silent hum of pleasure when his first taste of the unfamiliar liquid brought with it the long forgotten taste of honey and lemon alongside of the slightly bitter taste of tea.

There was something comforting about the taste of tea (even if the flavor didn't quite match his fragmented memories) and one-thirty-eight did his best to savor every single drop of the drink in stark contrast to the way he'd guzzled his soup.

He was still nursing the same two ounces of tea when the blonde lady from that morning arrived in the company of two white haired men. The first white haired man looked old with wrinkles around his eyes and age spots on his face while the second man looked rather young despite the color of his hair with a pair of bright red tear tracks coursing down his face. The younger looking man was also nearly a foot taller than the older man. Both men stopped walking the moment they noticed that one-thirty-eight was awake and they openly studied him just as intently as he was studying them.

"I see what you mean about his eyes being rather unforgettable, Tsunade," the older white haired man stated as he finally moved closer to one-thirty-eight's bed. "I don't recall ever seeing that particular shade of green on any other human."

"Do you think the color of his eyes might be a visible marker for a previously undiscovered doujutsu, sensei?" the other white haired man inquired as he too moved closer.

One-thirty-eight instinctively shrank back away from the two men as he clutched his unfinished tea to his chest. He didn't know what it was about the two men but they just screamed danger to him. It wasn't that they were scary, because they weren't, they did feel powerful though and it made him feel small. He also didn't know whether or not they had been part of the faceless ones because he couldn't remember what any of the faceless ones looked like.

"Or the color could be the result of something that Orochimaru did to the child," the first man retorted grimly.

Upon hearing the name of the cruel man, one-thirty-eight gave out a deep throated growl that startled all four of the adults in the room (the nurse still lingering as she waited for the two boys to finish their meal). One-thirty-eight hated Orochimaru deeply and even just hearing the man's name was enough to stir both his anger and his fear. The small bit of tea in the cup he was holding froze in response to the negative emotions and soon the very air around one-thirty-eight began to steadily drop even as hoarfrost began forming on him, his clothes, and the bed he was sitting on.

"Calm down, gaki," Tsunade, as the older white haired man had called the blonde woman earlier, commanded as she walked up to one-thirty-eight and snapped her fingers in front of his face. One-thirty-eight flinched back away from her hand and dropped his tea cup as he jerked his eyes up to meet her gaze. "You are in no condition to go wasting chakra right now."

One-thirty-eight wilted under her stern gaze and the ice clinging to him quickly began melting as his anger fled in the wake of the woman's admonishment. He then dropped his eyes to the fallen cup on his bed and let out a pitiful whine under his breath the moment he realized that last little bit of his tea had been turned into a popsicle.

"Remarkable," the younger man declared as he scooped up a handful of the half melted ice crystals from the bottom of one-thirty-eight's bed. "This is irrefutable evidence that the boy has an active Hyouton. I'm also rather curious to know how he managed to grow that odd tree a couple of nights ago."

"I'm far more curious to know what triggered the child's anger," the other man countered as he stepped around the younger man so that he could reach out to place his hand under one-thirty-eight's chin and gently lifted the child's face so that the boy had no choice but to look up at the man. "Will you tell me what made you angry?"

"Orochimaru," the other boy answered in one-thirty-eight's place from his bedside as he stared at the group around one-thirty-eight's bed with wide, solemn eyes.

One-thirty-eight automatically growled again in response to hearing the hated name a second time, though before he could get angry enough draw on the ice again, the man holding his chin prisoner lightly flicked him on the nose. One-thirty-eight scowled at the man and jerked his face back out of the grip before he brought his hands up to avoid having his nose flicked a second time.

"It is impolite to growl like an animal; if you do not wish to be treated like a misbehaving puppy, then do not behave like one," the man admonished sternly as he waggled his finger in front of the child's eyes. The man then turned to address the other child, "Thank you for answering the question. Might I ask how you knew what was bothering your friend?"

"Cause that man makes me mad too."

"Ah, I see; and the reason why you felt the need to answer the question in your friend's place?"

"He wasn't going to say anything."

"What makes you say that?"

"Just a feeling," the boy replied with a shrug.

"Hnn," the old man hummed as he glanced between the two boys before his gaze once more settled on number one-thirty-eight. "Is what he said true?" The green-eyed boy shrugged and gave a halfhearted nod before he shrugged a second time. "Is there any particular reason why you aren't speaking? Is there something wrong with your throat?"

One-thirty-eight just shrugged and shook his head before he curled up and wrapped his arms around his legs. He didn't really have a reason for not speaking aside from the fact that he just didn't want to talk. Well, that and part of him just couldn't forget the way the faceless men and women always made the darkness come whenever he had tried to talk in the past. Besides, there were plenty of other people that were more than happy to do nothing but talk, so why did he need to say anything at all?

"Does that mean that you would be willing to answer some of my questions?" the man asked as he took a seat on the edge of the bed and one-thirty-eight blinked at him before he shrugged again. "Well, I suppose that's better than an outright refusal. Tell me, child, do you remember the number that you were given by the man who hurt you?" The child hesitated a moment before he slowly nodded yes. "Will you tell me what that number was?"

The green eyed boy frowned before he half shrugged his shoulders and then buried his face against his knees when the man frowned at him in response to his non-answer. He didn't like his number and he didn't want anyone else to know his number. People who knew his number always hurt him or grabbed at him.

"I had hoped that you would be a little more willing to cooperate but your reticence isn't completely unexpected under the circumstances," the old man murmured as he stood up. "Jiraiya, I'd like for you to approach the Yamanaka Clan and see if one of their more adept members will be available sometime tomorrow morning to view the child's memories. I'd also like for you to check in with Kasai and find out if any records were recovered from the child's prison room over the past few days."

"Wakatta, Sarutobi-sensei," the younger white haired man stated before he hurried out of the room.

The old man and the pretty woman left just a short while later and the young boy known only as test subject one-thirty-eight soon fell into a restless sleep that was filled with fragmented nightmares as his fears followed him into his dreams.

* * *

**Translations:** Japanese to English

Gaki – brat  
Hai – yes  
Wakatta – understood or I understand

**Notes: **

Cardiac arrhythmia – irregular or abnormal heartbeat

The boys' thought &amp; speech patterns – yes, I am aware that I am portraying both boys as being slightly more mature than most three and a half year old's would be; that is intentional. My reasoning for the portrayal is meant to reflect the meddling that Orochimaru did to increase their brain functions and the introduction of the brainstem cells of the Shodai Hokage (who was an adult in the prime of his life when he died) and those of an unnamed adult from the Yuki Clan in Harry's case.

They were also both exposed to a large number of adults that spoke almost nothing but technical and medical jargon in their presence for two years; something that will have affected their vocabulary. Harry's ability to speak and understand Japanese is based upon the same reasoning as he's been submersed in the Japanese language from the moment that Orochimaru found him and he was at an age where it would be feasible for him to pick up a new language fairly quickly.

* * *

**11-14-15:** _Minor edits made to chapter to fix spelling/grammar mistakes and removed unnecessary author's notes._


	3. The Decision

**Disclaimer:** _All HP characters are the property of JKR, the WB, and respective publishing companies and all Naruto characters are the property of Masashi Kishimoto. This is nothing more than a simple FanFiction that I have written. I have made no money from this or any of the other stories I have posted on this or other sites._

**Warnings:** _Mild to moderate violence, character death, alternate universe (i.e. kiss canon goodbye), OCC behaviors and personalities, a number of original characters and obscure canon characters to flesh out family trees, random chosen last names to give a number of characters surnames, and who knows what else._

**AN:** _This story is self-beta'd; so there may be occasional grammatical or spelling errors that crop up every now and then and for those I apologize in advance._

* * *

Chapter Three: The Decision

_December 17, 0283 AtD, 9:25 AM  
Konohagakure no Sato, Hi no Kuni_

The green eyed child tightly clutched the not yet empty cup of tea in his hands as he glared at Hiruzen while ignoring the long haired teen that was standing beside the Hokage. The child had been nursing that same four ounces of tea for over an hour (the ANBU hospital served breakfast at eight o'clock sharp every morning, unless a patient was unconscious or otherwise unable to eat) in a determined effort to make the half cup of liquid last as long as possible. The reason why the child was currently glaring at him was because Hiruzen had just told him to hurry up and finish his tea or put the cup down.

"If you will agree to set your cup down for a few moments, I will have someone bring a fresh cup for you when we are finished," Yamanaka Inoichi, the teen that had accompanied Hiruzen this morning, cajoled as he stepped closer and held his hands out for the cup.

The offer of more tea had the boy dropping his glare and downing the last few dregs in the cup before he eagerly handed the cup over while adamantly nodding his head in agreement. Apparently the prospect of getting a second cup of tea was enough to placate the child; something that both amused and saddened the Sandaime Hokage due to the fact that it was the first show of normal childish behavior that the child in question had displayed since waking up.

"Thank you, child," Inoichi murmured as he accepted the proffered cup and placed it on the hospital table beside the child's bed. "Please lie down and make yourself comfortable now; I'm going to use one of my family's techniques to view your memories so that we can better understand what happened to you. You may feel a little weird while I am viewing your memories but I promise you that my jutsu will not cause you any pain."

The child reluctantly did as he was told and held himself stiffly as Inoichi placed one hand on the child's head and formed a half seal with his other hand in order to initiate the jutsu. The seventeen year old hadn't been inside of the child's head for more than twelve minutes before the child let out a low whine of distress. Hiruzen frowned as the child then began writhing; his little hands flying up to grasp the wrist of Inoichi's hand that was touching his forehead. He was just grimly wondering what kind of terrible memory would spark such a reaction in the child when things went pear-shaped.

The temperature in the room plunged a good twenty degrees as a dozen jagged ice spikes burst forth from the floor beneath the child's bed; the deadly spikes barely missing Inoichi and the child and forcing Hiruzen to rapidly retreat from the vicinity of the bed. A split second later, a living rope of snow and ice as thick as Hiruzen's forearm rose from the child's chest to snake around Inoichi's torso. The Hokage took two steps forward out of concern for both teen and child before he stopped in shock as he watched several grayish-green vines sprout from around the base of the ice rope.

As he watched, the growing vines shot out to wrap around both of Inoichi's arms and promptly thickened into two inch thick tree branches while pale blue flower buds began appearing along the length of the branches. The buds bloomed a heartbeat later just before the branches heaved the trussed up Inoichi back and away from the child; breaking his connection to the child. Inoichi gave a soft pained grunt as the jutsu he was using was crudely broken by the physical separation but otherwise appeared to be unharmed.

Hiruzen shook himself out of his stupor at that point and hurried forward to slap a Sleep Seal Tag on the child. The child fell unconscious almost instantly the moment Hiruzen activated the seal; the living rope of ice solidifying and the vines turned branches ceasing all movement the moment he lost consciousness. The Sandaime stared at the frozen tableau for several seconds before he reached out to finger one of the delicate blue and white flowers that riddled the wooden ropes and his eyebrows climbed high in surprise when the flower melted the moment he touched it; the flowers were all made of fragile, velvet-like ice.

"All you all right, Inoichi?" Hiruzen inquired as he forced himself to focus on the blond teen currently trussed up in a combination of ice and wood.

"Yes, Hokage-sama; I just have a mild headache due to the jutsu being broken so roughly. I could also use a little help getting out of these bindings; he has me wrapped up in such a way that I can't move my arms at all."

Hiruzen signaled to one of the two hidden ANBU stationed in the room to stand guard over the two children and the moment the cat masked man dropped the camouflage jutsu, Hiruzen ordered, "Cut him free and seal both the wood and the ice into a scroll under a preservation seal; take special care not to touch the flowers or they will be destroyed. The samples are then to be taken to Aburame Shoichi so that they can be studied alongside of the samples taken from the tree that the child was found inside of the other night."

The masked shinobi nodded as he drew the katana that was strapped crosswise on his back. As the guard deftly cut free sections of the wood and ice, Hiruzen turned his attention back to Inoichi as he asked, "How much were you able to learn from his memories before he kicked you out of his mind? Were you at least able to identify the subject number that had been assigned to the child or the number and type of experiments that had been performed on him?"

"Not as much as you had hoped I would but I did learn that the child was designated as test subject one-thirty-eight and he was part of Orochimaru's Kekkei Genkai experiments," Inoichi replied as his arms were finally cut free from the thick restraining branches. "His memories are severely fragmented and the pieces strung together without any apparent rhyme or reason. I'm uncertain if the disjointed memories were subconsciously created by the child as a defensive measure to protect his mind from the constant pain he endured or if it was due to his mind sacrificing his memories to cope with the pain."

Inoichi paused for a moment as he massaged his right shoulder before he continued, "The one thing that I am certain of is that the broken memories were not the result of any one deliberately tampering with his mind. I also don't think the child intentionally forced me out. I felt no resistance pushing against my mind as I scrolled through his memories; one second I was viewing one of his memories and the next I was not."

"What memory were you viewing at the time?"

"I believe it was the child's memory of the night Orochimaru's deprivations came to light. The traitor had just injected the child with the combination of drugs that the recovered medical reports indicate he was using to activate the implanted Kekkei Genkai when something went wrong with the procedure. The child was in considerable pain just before the implanted Hyouton activated followed by the corrupted activation of the Mokuton. I was thrown out just as the child was completely encased in the ice riddled tree."

"Hnn," Hiruzen grunted as he reached down to brush the child's hair from his face as he tried not to think about the possibility that he would have to order the child put down to protect the village; there were times when he truly hated being the Hokage. The Sandaime then briefly glanced at the sleeping form of the other boy that had been found before he turned back to face Inoichi as he ordered, "Go find a medic to give you a quick scan to insure that the child's Kekkei Genkai didn't leave behind any unpleasant surprises and have them tend to your headache. Once you are finished, report to my office in order to give a full accounting of what you learned."

"Hai, Hokage-sama."

Hiruzen silently acknowledged the reply before he turned away from the children that his former favorite student had wronged and swept out of the room to escape the negative emotions that were currently weighing him down. As he stepped outside of the ANBU facility, Hiruzen silently signaled to one of his ever present ANBU Guards to go track down the rest of those individuals that would need to be part of the upcoming meeting. Once the frog masked woman had vanished in a swirl of smoke, Hiruzen stood for a moment and stared out over the village he loved while he tried to center his emotions so that he could approach the problem of what to do with the only two survivors of Orochimaru's wretched experiments with a clear head.

Forty-three minutes later, Hiruzen watched the individuals he had summoned step inside of his office from behind his desk. All of the men and women he had called upon were powerful allies and friends that he'd known for years; men and women that he trusted with his life and with the lives of Konoha's people. The first ones to step inside of the room were Mitokado Homura and Utatane Koharu; Hiruzen's long time teammates and friends. He had named both of them as his advisors shortly after the Nidaime Hokage, Senju Tobirama, had chosen him to take up the mantle of Sandaime Hokage twenty-six years earlier.

The next person to enter on the heels of that pair was Shimura Danzou; another long time friend and often times a rival of Hiruzen's. They didn't always get along but the man loved Konoha as much as Hiruzen did and the old war hawk's council had been invaluable through the years; even if Hiruzen hadn't always appreciated Danzou's rather harsh militant stance. On Danzou's heels came the current ANBU Corps Commander; Akimichi Torifu also known as Kasai when he wore the featureless porcelain mask bearing a trio of stylized flames as he did now. Torifu was as ruthless as he was kind and the man ran the ANBU Corps with an iron fist but took pains to insure that the men under him were well taken care of both on and off duty.

After the masked Torifu, was Nara Shikarou; the current regent of the Nara Clan on behalf of his nephew (who would be named Head of the Clan upon his twenty-first birthday). The man was a genius when it came to strategy (as most members of the Nara Clan were) but it was his uncanny ability to unravel any mystery with naught but a handful of clues that had made him a name off of the battlefield. Nara Shikaku and Yamanaka Inoichi arrived just a minute later; the two teammates quietly conversing as they stepped into the office.

Shikaku, like his uncle, was a brilliant strategist despite the lazy façade he wore outside of battle. The Yamanaka heir wasn't a slouch in the intelligence department either. The blond teen was his clan's pride and joy; the first prodigy born into their clan in three generations, he'd quickly developed a deep understanding of the inner workings of the mind that allowed him to use his family's hidden jutsu to their fullest before he'd earned his hitai-ate. Those two young men, together with their absent teammate Akimichi Chouza (who was currently out of the village on a mission with his father), were a force to be reckoned with both on and off the battlefield.

Shifting his eyes past the two young teens, Hiruzen focused his gaze on another formidable trio that had just arrived; Hyuuga Haruto, Inuzuka Kamu, and Aburame Shoichi. All three men were the respective heads of their clans and all three of them were as different from one another as day is to night. Haruto was an unmoving stone in body and mind but once in action, he was as deadly as an avalanche and just as difficult to stop. Kamu was a fiery volcano of emotions by contrast; a man that lived from moment to moment and who was filled with a burning passion for life and beautiful women. And Shoichi was the silent support and mediator that held the team together and resolved any issues that cropped up with calm logic.

The next two individuals to arrive were Sato Furofuki and Umeboshi Nigiri. Furofuki was a talented medic that preferred researching healing jutsu, searching for cures to rare diseases, and creating an assortment of poisons and antidotes over actually healing patients. Nigiri, on the other hand, could give any Nara a run for their money when it came to decoding ciphers and codes; something that had seen the man appointed as the Head of the Cipher Division over twelve years ago.

The final two individuals to enter the room were Yamaguchi Jiraiya and Senju Tsunade; Hiruzen's students and Orochimaru's teammates. Tsunade was the daughter of Senju Takeshi, granddaughter of the Shodai Hokage (Senju Hashirama), and the sole surviving member of the Senju Clan. She was a powerful kunoichi and a gifted medic. By contrast, Jiraiya was an orphan with no special talents (unless one counted his ability to make enemies out of every woman within a hundred miles of his vicinity because of his perverted tendencies). He was also hard working, bull-headed, and utterly devious when the mood struck him.

Hiruzen's thoughts turned inwards at that point as he allowed his thoughts to once again turn back to his traitorous student.

Orochimaru had also been an orphan but unlike Jiraiya, Orochimaru was gifted; the snake summoner had been the type of prodigy that all teachers longed to teach just so they could claim to have had a hand in his achievements. Hiruzen had taken that brilliant mind under his wing and given him everything he could to make him great. Tragically, somewhere along the line, Orochimaru had become corrupted without letting on that he was sinking deeper into the forbidden arts with every breath he took. War had turned the once bright child into a cold man that wouldn't think twice about inflicting unspeakable horrors upon helpless children.

Fighting back a pained sigh, Hiruzen banished his former fatherly feelings for his old student to the depths of soul and focused on the here and now so that he could bring the meeting to order, "Thank you all for arriving promptly. I know that I originally gave each of you a full two weeks to compile your findings but complications have arisen and I need an overview of what you have learned to date so that I can make an informed decision on what to do with the two young survivors that were found within Orochimaru's hidden laboratory."

"Do the complications you mentioned have anything to do with the defensive reaction that the unidentified boy had to the mind intrusion earlier this morning?" Kasai demanded gruffly.

"Yes."

"What happened?" Shikarou inquired curiously.

"According to Usagi's report, the child used a combination of the Hyouton and the Mokuton to disrupt and break free from the Mind Delving; wrapping Inoichi up in ice and tree branches so tightly he couldn't break free on his own," Kasai answered in Hiruzen's place.

"Mendoukusei," Shikaku muttered in a lazy tone.

"Why did you have one of the Yamanaka peeking through a child's head?" Nigiri demanded with a slight frown. "A child's mind is far more delicate than an adult's mind and therefore far easier to damage if you are not careful."

"The boy in question has remained stubbornly silent since he woke up yesterday and we needed information that only the child could provide for us due to the fact that we were unable to recover all of the records on what had been done to him," Hiruzen explained as he picked up his favorite pipe, filled the bowl with fresh tobacco leaves, struck a match, and lit his pipe. "We also needed to know whether or not Orochimaru tampered with the child's mind above and beyond what he did in the course of the experimentations to prevent him from answering our questions."

"I had originally intended to wait a couple of more days before I called in one of the Yamanaka to view his memories but I thought it best not to wait after the mere mention of my former student's name triggered a negative response from the child last night. While that normally wouldn't be an issue, the child's anger set off an automatic activation of his implanted Hyouton which resulted in the temperature of their secure ward dropping several degrees and I am uncertain if he would have also called upon the Mokuton if he hadn't been snapped out of his anger fairly quickly."

"You believe that the child might be too dangerous to let live," Kasai stated in a grim monotone.

"I don't like it," Kamu muttered darkly. "Children are meant to be protected; not disposed of simply because they have not yet been trained."

"Child or not; the boy is nothing more than a faulty weapon. Better to give him a merciful death now and spare the village from the untold destruction he could unleash than to sacrifice half of our force to put him down after he loses control completely and goes on a rampage," Danzou countered almost coldly.

"There is no point in discussing the child's future or lack there of until we have all of the facts on the table," Hiruzen interjected before anyone else could make a retort. "Inoichi, could you please start by informing the rest of the room what you learned while delving the child's memories earlier?"

"The first thing I need to point out is that the child's memories were a mess. I am still uncertain as to whether or not the fragmented and disjointed memories I found were subconsciously created by the child as a defensive measure to protect his mind from the constant pain that he was inflicted with during his captivity or if it was due to his mind sacrificing his memories in order to cope with said pain. I do know that the child's broken memories were not a result of Orochimaru or any one else tampering with his mind."

"The deplorable state of the child's memories made it difficult to gather any in depth information on exactly what had been done to the child but I was able to piece together enough information to get a rough idea. I will start with the information that I learned about the child before I cover what I learned in regards to what was done to the child during his imprisonment. First, the child had been found abandoned and alone in the forest by Orochimaru approximately two years ago. Next, the child has no true memories of his life prior to being found by the traitor. The last thing I learned is that the child has refused to speak because he just doesn't want to talk, though part of that is the belief that no one will listen to him since none of those who harmed him ever listened to him when he begged them to stop."

"That brings me to the information I collected in regards to what was done to the child. To start, the child was designated as test subject one-thirty-eight and he was used in at least three Kekkei Genkai experiments that involved his unnamed internal healing ability, the Hyouton, and the Mokuton. There was also an indication that Orochimaru performed some other medical experiments on him but those memories were not clear enough for me to determine what kind of experiments they were. Next, the child was in near constant pain throughout his entire time as Orochimaru's prisoner; meaning that the child was basically tortured for a minimum of two years."

"The very last thing I learned about what had been done to him was that Orochimaru had been attempting to activate the child's implanted Mokuton the night Orochimaru's activities were discovered. It was at that point that I was cast out of the child's mind due to the child's two bloodlines physically breaking my contact with the child," Inoichi finished with a trace of embarrassment.

"He physically broke the connection? He didn't fight you mentally?" Shikaku questioned after a minute of silence filled the office.

"No, there was no mental resistance from the child at all. I've delved through the minds of enough individuals over the past seven years to recognize what it feels like when someone fights my presence and that feeling of resistance was not present in the child."

"Mendoukusei, I didn't doubt your ability to sense resistance; I was seeking clarification that you hadn't felt him fighting your intrusion on a mental level since it is rare for someone to physically force you out of their mind," Shikaku muttered with an eye roll.

"You might not have but there are others present that might have doubted my capabilities if I hadn't spoken up and pointed out my current level of experience," Inoichi dryly pointed out as he slapped his friend and teammate upside the back of his head.

"Tch, whatever," Shikaku muttered as he side-stepped out of reach of Inoichi's hands to avoid future head slaps.

"Does anyone else have anything they wanted to ask?" Hiruzen inquired as he easily ignored the two teen's less than professional interactions; he was used to his shinobi frequently acting like children around him once they got over their awe of being in his presence.

"How exactly did subject one-thirty-eight physically break the connection between his mind and Inoichi's mind?" Koharu inquired when no one else spoke up.

"He first attempted to shove Inoichi's hand off of his forehead before a ring of ice spikes separated the child and Inoichi from the rest of the room," Hiruzen answered. "A rope of ice sprung up from the boy's chest to wrap around Inoichi's chest immediately after the spikes stopped growing and several flowering vines grew from the base of the rope to wrap themselves around Inoichi's arms. The vines then thickened into branches as they forced his hands up and out as the ice rope shoved him backwards. I do not know what else the child would have done if I had not stepped in at that point and slapped a sleep seal on the child to end the two jutsu."

"Just to clarify; were the ice and the vines completely separate forms or were they twined together?" Shoichi asked as his brow furrowed slightly; an indication that the man was frowning behind his sunglasses and jacket collar.

"Separate; though the delicate flowers that appeared on the vines appeared to be made entirely from ice despite the fact that they looked and behaved like actual flowers."

"Were you able to determine the child's mental health and emotional stability?" Shikarou inquired while everyone else was still digesting the information that Inoichi had given them.

"The child was traumatized by his experiences; which is only expected given the level of suffering he endured. His mind was not broken, however, and I do not believe that he poses any risk to either himself or to the village. Unfortunately, I do not know where he stands emotionally; his emotions were far too jumbled for me to get an accurate read of them at the time bar the powerful hate towards the one he believes is responsible for that pain; Orochimaru. I highly recommend that he receive regular counseling in order to help him deal with everything that happened to him; if only to help him cope with his darker memories and emotions."

"I will make note of your recommendation and see that arrangements are made once we've reached a decision on what to do with both children," Hiruzen stated as he made several notes on the scroll that he had been using to record Inoichi's report. "Did anyone else have any other questions for Inoichi?"

"Yes, can you describe the place where Orochimaru found the child?" Kasai asked and Hiruzen was certain that the man was frowning beneath his mask due to his tone of voice.

"It was a rather small clearing filled with smoke and what I could see of the ground and the surrounding trees in the memory were charred; as if there had been a fire in that clearing fairly recently."

"I suspected as much. The place where Orochimaru found the boy was less than five miles outside of Konoha and the date was November first, two hundred-eighty-one just a few minutes after midnight. Most of you will recall that that was the same night that the wall sentries reported an unusual disturbance outside of the village in the form of a bright gold light. The ANBU Squad sent to investigate the matter found nothing but a few singed trees in a small clearing."

"I vaguely recall reading a report about that incident," Hiruzen half mused to himself before he returned his attention to the meeting. "Were there any other questions? No? Then let us move on. Kasai, can you give us a report on the ongoing investigation that your department is carrying out on the underground premises?"

"According to what we've uncovered to date, the traitor had apparently been conducting experiments on living humans for roughly six years and suspect that he was experimenting on the dead for another five to ten years before that. During the initial sweep of the base, my men collected the corpses of well over two hundred and fifty young adults in their late teens or early twenties and another one hundred sixty corpses from adults between the ages of thirty and sixty. We also found the remains of sixty-seven children between the ages of two and seven; all of them preserved in various stages of dissection."

"Only half of the adult corpses recovered were from Orochimaru's bloodline experiments while the rest of the corpses appear to have been part of at least six other experiments. The research notes and medical reports that were found were turned over to the research team for analysis while we continued to search the premises for more clues. We also recovered a large collection of genetic samples that were turned over to the medical research team alongside of the corpses. Unfortunately, it was also clear that Orochimaru and his henchmen had a minimum of thirty minutes to collect and destroy a large amount of evidence before they scattered."

"Thank you, Kasai," Hiruzen murmured as he fought not to react to the large number of people (far too many of them young children) that had suffered at his student's hand. "Shikarou, what have you been able to piece together out of the notes and records that were found? And please limit your report to those findings that pertain to the two surviving children and the Kekkei Genkai experiments that Orochimaru was conducting; we can discuss your findings on his other experiments some other time."

"As you wish, Hokage-sama. Based upon the older notes and journals that were found, Orochimaru has been researching a method of implanting or transplanting Kekkei Genkai for just over a decade, though he didn't start implementing his procedure on living subjects until approximately four years ago. We now have solid evidence that Orochimaru was the one that had been stealing the bodies of Kekkei Genkai users from the morgue on top of hording the bodies of enemies he faced in battle; all of which ended up as part of his experiments. The number of deceased Kekkei Genkai carriers in his possession numbered well into the hundreds."

"The total number of different types of Kekkei Genkai users he had collected was closer to forty and the carriers were collected from a number of clans and families scattered throughout all of the Elemental Nations and hidden villages; including multiple subjects from the clans of Konoha. Despite the diversity of the Kekkei Genkai that he had collected, Orochimaru was rather fixated on the Mokuton. In fact, ninety percent of the experiments he conducted had been on the Mokuton while the other ten percent focused on a small number of other elemental Kekkei Genkai."

Shikarou paused for a moment to allow everyone a chance to absorb that information before he continued, "The first one hundred thirty-seven attempts Orochimaru made to implant a Kekkei Genkai into a living subject were well documented in the notes. All one hundred thirty-seven of those trials were failures and not a single one of the adult test subjects used in them survived. The tone of the research notes had grown increasingly more frustrated with each failure and there are indications that Orochimaru was on the verge of abandoning the project completely right up until he acquired test subject one-thirty-eight."

"Most of the research notes and medical charts on subject one-thirty-eight are missing; a clear indication that the traitor either took those notes with him when he fled or they were destroyed. There were, however, two references made in regards to the child shortly after he was found within the original research files. First, the boy was the only test subject to carry an existing Kekkei Genkai prior to him being used as part of the Kekkei Genkai experiments. The only information found on the Kekkei Genkai he carried was that it involved an internal healing ability that gave him an accelerated rate of healing. The second thing we learned was that the child's chakra network was weak and on the verge of collapsing when he was first found."

"The next mention we found of test subject one-thirty-eight was actually a second reference to his inborn healing ability and that was found in the medical records on the child identified as test subject one-eighty-one. After combing through the medical records of the other children that had been involved in the experiments, we found an additional thirty-three references to number one-thirty-eight's healing ability and the attempt made by Orochimaru to transplant that ability into those thirty-four children."

"Only fifteen of the children would survive the procedure that was meant to grant them one-thirty-eight's healing ability and out of those fifteen only seven of them had gained a weaker version of one-thirty-eight's healing ability while the other eight received a mild boost to their immune systems. The boy known as test subject one-eighty-one was counted amongst the seven children that received a watered down version of one-thirty-eight's healing ability. Subject one-eighty-one was also the only other child to survive Orochimaru's Mokuton experiments."

"According to one-eighty-one's medical charts; the integration of the Shodai's Mokuton was successful and activation of the implanted bloodline was scheduled for sometime in May. According to what little information we have on subject one-thirty-eight, the activation of his second bloodline was scheduled for the same time period; indicating that Orochimaru either got impatient or something went wrong. Further speculation leads us to believe that the strange tree was an unintended side effect of Orochimaru activating the Mokuton in subject one-thirty-eight. Unless the research notes and medical charts for that child turn up at some point there is no way for us to confirm that theory though."

"Our team will need more time and the notes from the medical team if you wish us to piece together a detailed timeline of the experimentation, compile a full list of the physical effects the integration of the Kekkei Genkai will have on the two children, and determine the potential negative aspects of the children using the implanted abilities," Shikarou stated after he'd finished summarizing his team's findings.

"Wakatta. What has your team learned from the tree samples that were taken?"

"Far more than we expected, Shoichi; did you wish to present the findings since you were the one in charge of those tests?" Shikarou inquired as he glanced towards the other man.

"First, the tree and the veins of ice that riddled the tree were both composed entirely of elemental chakra," Shoichi began in response to the questioning prompt. "Second, the chakra used to create the tree was corrupted. Third, the growth of the tree was uncontrolled and sporadic as the element used to fuel its growth constantly switched back and forth between wood and ice; hence the reason why the tree was riddled with veins of ice. Fourth, there was a secondary energy present that was completely unrelated to chakra that was found within the decaying remains of the tree."

"Fifth, that alternate energy is what created the feeling of wrongness associated with the ice riddled tree. Sixth, that alternate energy was the reason for the rapid decay of the wood and ice formation. And last of all, the source of the secondary energy appears to be subject one-thirty-eight but without access to the child, I am unable to confirm or refute that theory at this time."

Shoichi paused for a moment to gather his thoughts before he picked up where he left off, "The conclusions that can be drawn from those seven facts are as follows. One, Orochimaru successfully integrated both the Hyouton and the Mokuton into the child designated as test subject one-thirty-eight. Two, both Kekkei Genkai were forcefully activated at some point after their implantation. Three, a break down of the elements involved indicates that the child's dominant affinity is wind but that the Mokuton is actually the dominant bloodline with earth being the dominant affinity of the Mokuton.

"Four, the activation of the second Kekkei Genkai caused a conflict within the child's chakra network and the result of that conflict was that the child's earth and wind natures fought for dominance of his water nature. The battle between the two dominate elements was easy to read in the ice riddled wood of the tree. Five, the unnatural twisted growth of the ice and wood formation was an indication that the child's wind affinity was strong enough to affect the Mokuton. And six, if the child is the source of the secondary energy that was present, then that energy is potentially stronger than his chakra."

"The new samples that were delivered to our research facility should help us to determine the source of the secondary energy. However, direct access to the child in question would be the only definitive method of determining whether or not the child is the source of the secondary energy or if it something generated by the combination of opposing Kekkei Genkai," Shoichi finished in his usual monotone.

"Do you believe that the alternate energy you discovered is dangerous? Will it harm anyone that comes into contact with it?" Hiruzen inquired with some concern while the worry he felt was openly reflected on a number of the other faces in the room.

"No. The energy itself is not malicious – it is just different. In fact, one could go so far as to say that the alternate energy is to chakra what wine is to juice. They both come from fruits (or grains in some cases) but they both have far different properties and tastes. Pouring wine into juice corrupts the juice though; much as the second energy corrupted the chakra it came into contact with. I also do not believe that the unfamiliar energy will corrupt anyone else's chakra in quite the same way that it corrupted the chakra in the ice riddled tree or it would have been far more difficult to study the samples taken. In other words, the corrupting influence of the secondary energy was limited to the construct in which it was found and potentially within the child himself."

"That is good news. You have my leave to continue studying this secondary energy in an effort to pinpoint the source and log the full effects it has on those objects or people that come into contact with it," Hiruzen replied before he turned his attention to the kunoichi that he'd placed in charge of the medical research. "Furofuki, what have you learned from the remains of those that failed Orochimaru's experiments so far?"

"Orochimaru was using cells cultivated from the dead tissue of various Kekkei Genkai holders in order to 'gift' his test subjects with the Kekkei Genkai of the donor. The cells he cultivated for the transplants were bone marrow cells, blood cells, and brain stem cells. He was also integrating original cells from the selected donors into the test subjects' bodies; most specifically portions of the Kekkei Genkai user's chakra coils and pathways. Basically, he was seeking to forcefully alter the genetics of his test subjects in order to grant them rare or useful bloodlines."

"He focused mainly on the Mokuton; as ninety percent of the deceased test subjects we have tested to date have had the cultivated cells of the Shodai Hokage integrated into their bodies. The chakra pathway and coil transplants were mostly taken from other deceased members of the Senju Clan with both earth and water affinities that had activated the clan's Kekkei Genkai. However that does not hold true for at least five of the fourteen of the children that died between August and October; their transplants were all taken directly from the remains of Senju Hashirama."

Furofuki paused on her report when Tsunade made a strangled noise of anger and horror over that particular revelation; the blonde obviously angry and disturbed to learn that her teammate had desecrated her grandfather's grave and the graves of her dead clan members. Furofuki waited for Tsunade to regain control of her emotions before she continued with her report.

"Each test subject that we have studied to date had died after the third stage of the integration; when Orochimaru surgically expanded the subject's chakra coils by implanting minute portions of the donor's chakra coils. The cause of death for those subjects was determined to be the complete destruction of their chakra coils as a direct result of the procedure to integrate portions of the donor's coils. We will start examining the bodies of those that survived the third stage but failed the fourth stage once we have finished with the former."

"What about those that failed after the first or second phase of the experiment?" Hiruzen inquired with a slight frown.

"There were no test subjects that failed during or after the first two stages; at least, no human subjects. Stages three and four of the experiments were critical because they directly manipulated the subject's coils where a person's mental and physical energies are combined to form chakra and the subject's brain. On the other hand, stages one and two were merely manipulating the subject's D.N.A. in order to create a vessel capable of wielding the power he attempted to bestow upon the test subject."

"Thank you for clarifying that," Hiruzen murmured before he turned his attention to Tsunade. "Tsunade, what can you tell us about the current health of both survivors?"

"The boy identified as subject one-eighty-one is recovering from the ordeal. His injuries were rather minor aside from the surgical incisions from the multiple operations he'd undergone. His physical coordination is still far below what one would expect for a child of his estimated age, which is somewhere between three and four years old. Something that I believe is the result of him being physically restrained for long periods of time over a period of approximately eighteen months and not a side effect of the procedures performed on him. And lastly, his chakra coils are still in a slightly chaotic state as his body struggles to incorporate the implanted Kekkei Genkai. There is no indication as of yet as to whether or not the child will ever activate the foreign Kekkei Genkai that was integrated into his body."

"The other boy though… the one designated as one-thirty-eight… he is, for all intents and purposes, completely healed and has been since about twenty-four hours after his removal from the underground base; a result, no doubt, of the unnamed internal healing ability he is purported to have. The only reason he did not wake up sooner was strictly due to the extreme chakra exhaustion he had been suffering from at the time. He has no residual scarring bar a faint jagged scar on his forehead; the origin of which is currently unknown since the placement of the scar is inconsistent with any of the procedures associated with the bloodline experiments."

"Furthermore, despite indications that subject one-thirty-eight spent a minimum of two years restrained in the same manner as the other child, his physical coordination is improving at a phenomenal rate. Upon first awakening yesterday morning, he displayed the same uncoordinated movements and weakness that the other boy had but by yesterday evening, his body had completely adjusted to the new freedom of movement that had been denied to him for so long. To me, that is a clear indication that the child's healing ability grants him an added ability to incorporate muscle memory a minimum of three times faster than the current average for his age group. And the child's age is not a factor since he is about the same age as the other boy."

"What of the child's chakra network?" Shoichi inquired the moment Tsunade trailed off.

"The ruptures throughout his chakra network that were noted when he was first found have all been healed and I spent much of my time over the past three days reinforcing his pathways and coils in order to prevent future ruptures. His chakra reserves have also replenished at a far faster rate than normal; based upon how low his reserves were on the night he was found, the child should have been suffering from severe chakra exhaustion for another week or two. However, as of this morning, his reserves had been mostly restored. On top of that, the chakra he is producing is corrupted. It feels like normal chakra but at the same time it doesn't. There is a sense of wildness to his chakra that shouldn't exist."

"Could he be drawing upon natural energy?" Jiraiya asked curiously.

"No; his chakra feels nothing like yours when you are in sage mode. I know it sounds crazy but the child's chakra feels like it is alive in a way that shouldn't be possible."

"Haruto, can you shed further light on what is going on with the child's chakra?" Hiruzen questioned as he tried to hide growing disquiet over what he was learning about the child in question.

"No; my Byakugan detected no abnormalities in the child's chakra network aside from the fact that his pathways and coils are abnormally large for a child near his age. I'd estimate that his reserves could easily be comparable to those of a low to mid Jounin in size at the moment and that they will only grow larger as he matures, providing that he is trained. The color of his chakra is slightly… off, for lack of a better word; appearing more as a pale gold rather than yellow like normal chakra. Aside from that, the only other thing of note would be the fact that the blending of the child's mental and physical energies is far better balanced than I would have expected based upon his age, lack of chakra training, and the internal conflict that Shoichi spoke of earlier between his elemental affinities and his Kekkei Genkai."

"Thank you, Haruto. Are there any other questions or comments? No…? Then I would hear your suggestions on what should be done with the two remaining survivors of Orochimaru's experiments."

"Is it possible to track down their parents?" Kamu inquired; family was an important concept to the Inuzuka.

"Doubtful; Orochimaru didn't exactly leave any detailed records behind when it came to the origins of the children he had used in his experiments," Jiraiya pointed out with a scowl. "And we have even less information about the second child; since his records were missing or destroyed."

"Knowing Orochimaru as well as I do, I can guarantee that the children he used for his experiments were all nameless orphans from no-name villages scattered throughout the Elemental Nations," Hiruzen added in a heavy tone as he felt another flash of grief and guilt mixed with anger. "He would not have wanted to there to be any chance that someone would take notice of the missing children and start searching for them. That isn't even taking into consideration the fact that the child designated as subject one-thirty-eight was apparently abandoned in the forest before he was found."

"Even if that weren't the case, it would be inadvisable to hand either child off to anyone outside of Konoha," Homura interjected; the bespectacled man speaking up for the first time since the meeting started. "To do so would be to invite disaster simply because the children could be turned into weapons that would be used against Konoha."

"Why not give them to one of the clans to raise then?" Nigiri suggested on the heels of Homura's statement. "In fact, why not allow Tsunade to raise them? One of them has already displayed the capability of using the Mokuton and the other has a high chance of activating the Kekkei Genkai down the line; that practically makes them Senju…"

"Absolutely not!" Tsunade barked irritably as she directed a thread of killing intent towards the older man. "I don't care if they can use the Mokuton or not; those two boys are not and will never be Senju!"

"Calm down, Tsunade; it was just a suggestion, not a life's sentence," Hiruzen gently chided as he felt his heart break a little more for his fiery student; she had endured so much pain as she lost her family and loved ones one by one through the years and now they had learned that her teammate and honorary brother had desecrated her grandfather's remains. "I do not believe that Nigiri meant his proposal to cause you pain and putting the children in your care would give them access to your grandfather's Mokuton scrolls…"

"I'll give you the damn scrolls; I neither need nor want them because my grandfather's vaunted Kekkei Genkai skipped me entirely due to my Uzumaki heritage being dominant. I also refuse to be saddled with two babies."

"As you wish," Hiruzen capitulated out of respect for the woman's grief and more importantly out of a desire to avoid having her ire (and therefore her fist) directed towards him. "Since there are a number of clan heads present; which one of you would be willing to take guardianship of the two boys?"

"I do not believe it is a good idea to grant guardianship of either boy to any of the clans," Shikarou interjected before any one could speak up to offer the boys a home. "The political balance of power between the clans would be destroyed the moment you granted custody of the children to one or two of the clans. Don't forget; with the Mokuton potentially comes the Shodai's ability to control and contain the bijuu. The only clan that wouldn't affect the balance would be the Sarutobi Clan but placing the children under the care of your family, Hokage-sama, would place too great of scrutiny on the boys and paint a larger target on their heads."

"Are you suggesting that I should dispose of both children?" Hiruzen asked as he saw no other recourse given the truth in the Nara's words.

"No, I do not think they pose a threat to the village. The child designated as subject one-thirty-eight could have easily killed Inoichi instead of merely pushing him away; the child could have skewered him with the spikes of ice you said formed around him, after all. It would be best if both children were placed in the care of a shinobi whose loyalty to the village is above reproach. Someone strong enough to protect the children, patient enough to teach them how to control the twisted gift that the traitor forced upon them, and ordinary enough that they will not garner extra attention just by being in his or her care."

"I would be willing to take them in and train them," Danzou offered the moment Shikarou had finished clarifying his suggestion.

"You are far too well known to raise two children in obscurity," Kasai countered as he crossed his arms. "The guardian of the two boys should be selected from the rank and file shinobi; someone who has not necessarily made a name for himself. I also think it best that no one outside of the Hokage knows who is selected as their guardian in order to further protect the children. It would not do for rumors of their survival to make it back to Orochimaru, after all."

"I approve of that idea," Shikarou stated lazily.

"As do I," Shoichi agreed a heartbeat later.

"I would not be opposed to that," Kamu added after a moment. "Providing both boys with a family would raise the chances of them being grounded enough that they will grow up to be loyal to the village."

One by one the rest of those present agreed with Kasai's suggestion; though Hiruzen could tell that Danzou only agreed because he didn't wish to be the sole voice of opposition. He also knew that his friend and rival wished to turn the two boys into emotionless weapons to increase Konoha's power base. That was one of the many issues that he and his old friend disagreed on; children were meant to be children, not emotionless tools. Pushing aside his ruminations, Hiruzen wrapped up the meeting.

"Very well, then; I will go through the rosters to find an appropriate guardian to take the two boys. I will give the rest of you until the end of the month to wrap up your investigations and research. Dismissed."

Everyone began filing out of the office at that point until the only ones remaining were Hiruzen, Kasai, Jiraiya, and Tsunade. Knowing that his old friend wouldn't speak until the other two left, Hiruzen looked to his two remaining students and gestured for them to speak up.

"In exchange for handing over my grandfather's Mokuton Scrolls to train the two boys, I'd like to request permission to leave the village," Tsunade stated after a brief glance in Jiraiya's direction. "I can't stay here. It was hard enough before Orochimaru's treachery was discovered but now… I just can't… it hurts too much."

"I was afraid that this day would come," Hiruzen intoned as he suddenly felt decades older than his forty-seven years. "I will grant you leave to travel outside of the village for as long as you need providing you send back periodical reports with any information on Konoha's enemies that you stumble upon. Will you be taking young Shizune with you? I know that you promised…"

"I would prefer to leave her here in Konoha but I doubt she will allow me to leave her behind," Tsunade interrupted before Hiruzen could speak her deceased fiancé's name.

"I shall draw up the apprenticeship paperwork for you then, so that you have a legitimate reason to take her out of the village with you when you leave. How soon do you plan to leave?"

"I wish I could leave right now but I will stay until the two boys are turned over to their new guardian."

"How much longer do you estimate it to be until the boys can be released?"

"They can be released now. There is no real reason for them to stay in the hospital aside from monitoring their diet to insure there are no complications from them being reintroduced to solid foods after they had been fed intravenously for an unnaturally long period. There is also their physical therapy sessions to considered – the latter of which the second boy hasn't even started yet, though I am beginning to suspect that he will not need them as much as the first boy."

"I will see if I can locate an appropriate guardian for them within the next five to seven days."

"Arigatou, sensei; I will deliver grandfather's scrolls to you sometime tomorrow," Tsunade murmured before she turned away from him and wandered out of the room looking for all the world like a lost lamb instead of the powerful kunoichi she was.

"I thought you would fight harder to keep her here, sensei," Jiraiya commented once the blonde had disappeared.

"Konoha has nothing to hold her here any longer. She only stayed for you… and _him_. His betrayal was the final straw for her and the fact that he desecrated her grandfather's remains with his wretched experiments only made it worse. What about you? Are you going to stay or are you going to leave again?"

"I will leave when Tsunade leaves unless you need me to stick around for another week. I want to pick up Orochimaru's trail and see if I can find out where he's planning to go to ground."

"Very well; I will expect your usual monthly reports then. Do be careful out there, Jiraiya."

"I'm always careful," Jiraiya stated as he crossed his arms and all but pouted at Hiruzen.

"Unless there is a scantily clad woman in sight and then you turn into a drooling idiot," Kasai countered dryly.

"Speaking of which, I'd best go get in as much research as I can before I leave," Jiraiya murmured as he ignored the insult in Kasai's words, slapped a seal tag down on top of Hiruzen's desk, and slipped out of the window without actually saying goodbye to either man.

Two seconds later, a small privacy barrier shimmered into existence around both men and the desk as Kasai activated the seal that Jiraiya had intentionally left on his way out of the room. The man then pulled the mask from his face and ran a weary hand over his face before he looked up to meet Hiruzen's gaze.

"You'd better get those boys moved quickly before they end up disappearing right out from under our noses. In fact, it would probably be better to fake the children's deaths in order to insure that Orochimaru believes both boys to have died as a result of his experiments," Torifu bluntly instructed. "Too many people know about them and too many people will be tempted to take control of the children in an attempt to harness their abilities for themselves. It almost would have been better if there had been no survivors found."

"Do what you want to secure the boys; just be sure you let Tsunade know where you put them so that she can continue monitoring their recovery. Once you've done that, I want you to hunt down two trustworthy shinobi to take guardianship of them; I want them separated in order to further protect them since the others are expecting me to keep them together."

"Why not choose their new guardians yourself?"

"I stand out too much and my every move will be watched closely. It is better that I play decoy in order to draw attention away from you and the individuals you select to take guardianship of the boys. I know I can trust you not to accidentally lose one or both of the boys during the transference."

"Wakatta. Do you want me to pass you the name of their guardians once the deed has been done?"

"No. I think it best that I learn nothing of their whereabouts until they turn fifteen or they are promoted to Chuunin; which ever comes later. The less I know about their lives from this point forward, the safer they will be."

"As you wish, old friend," Torifu replied as he slipped his mask back on and destroyed the seal tag generating the privacy barrier.

Hiruzen found himself alone in his office once more a minute later. As he watched the smoke dissipate from Torifu's transportation technique, he couldn't help but wonder if he had made the right decision. After a moment, he buried his self-doubts and began the tedious process of going through the day's paperwork even as he made a dozen different plans to draw attention away from Torifu's task.

* * *

**Translations:** Japanese to English

Arigatou – thank you  
Gaki – brat  
Hai – yes  
Kasai – flame  
Mendoukusei – how troublesome, what a drag, or this sucks (Shikamaru's catch phrase – which I've sorta turned into a Nara Family catch phrase)  
Usagi – hare/rabbit  
Wakatta – I understand/understood

* * *

**11-14-15:** _Minor edits made to chapter to fix spelling/grammar mistakes and removed unnecessary author's notes._


	4. The Guardian

**Disclaimer:** _All HP characters are the property of JKR, the WB, and respective publishing companies and all Naruto characters are the property of Masashi Kishimoto. This is nothing more than a simple FanFiction that I have written. I have made no money from this or any of the other stories I have posted on this or other sites._

**Warnings:** _Mild to moderate violence, character death, alternate universe (i.e. kiss canon goodbye), OCC behaviors and personalities, a number of original characters and obscure canon characters to flesh out family trees, random chosen last names to give a number of characters surnames, and who knows what else._

**AN:** _This story is self-beta'd; so there may be occasional grammatical or spelling errors that crop up every now and then and for those I apologize in advance._

* * *

Chapter Four: The Guardian

_December 17, 0283 AtD, 1:14 PM  
Konohagakure no Sato, Hi no Kuni_

Torifu walked into his office several minutes after he'd left the Hokage's office. He stood stock still in the center of the room for several minutes while he considered his assigned tasks from every possible angle. He then moved to his desk and sat down to start putting the plans he'd come up with into motion. Torifu started by writing out a coded message for Shoichi to deliver two of the ten storage scrolls holding the remains of the tree that had grown out of the underground lab to the ANBU Infirmary room that the boys shared later that night. A second coded message was then prepared for Furofuki; only this time he was asking for her to deliver the remains of two of the deceased children that were roughly the same age and size of the two boys.

Both messages were sealed with complex security seals that would destroy the missives if anyone but their intended recipients attempted to open them. Torifu then stepped out of his office and ordered the first masked ANBU Guard to cross his path to deliver the two scrolls immediately. Messages sent, Torifu spun around on heel and headed to the records storeroom where the true files for all current and past shinobi were kept; the public records that could be found in the Hokage's archive had been expunged of any classified or sensitive information to protect individual, clan, and village secrets.

He would spend close to three hours amidst the sealed cabinets that held the files for those shinobi that were twenty-two or older (the files organized by birthdate rather than by name in order to make it a little more difficult for spies or traitors to quickly find any information they hoped to steal). As he searched through the files, he ignored the files of those men and women that had made a name for themselves outside of Konoha and those who had been born into a clan. He also ignored the files of those that were known troublemakers or who had had their loyalty to the village questioned at some point in their past. The last of the files that he avoided were of those individuals that had at any point worked alone with Orochimaru.

At the end of those three hours, he would have pulled a grand total of three files.

Another hour would be spent pouring through all three files and comparing the information contained within the files to what he knew of the individuals in question. He then returned the files to their respective cabinets before he made his way back to his office as he contemplated which two individuals would make the most appropriate guardians for the two survivors. By the time he returned to his office, Torifu knew which two he would be contacting about taking in the two boys while leaving the third individual as a back-up in case one of his first two choices didn't pan out. The next step was to create a back story for both children and draw up the necessary paperwork and records.

When the documents were finished sometime later, the only information missing were the boys' names and birth dates and the signatures of their new guardians. Those things were unimportant at the moment though as it was time for him to start implementing his plans to fake the children's deaths. He took a moment to seal the newly created documents into two separate scrolls (one for each child) that he then sealed into the bottom drawer of his desk to protect them from theft and the casual eye while he was out of the room.

Torifu then left his office and headed down to the ANBU Barracks where he would spend an hour and a half cleaning up and preparing a pair of empty rooms for the children in an unused wing of the barracks on the lowest level. His reasoning for splitting up the children was the same as Sarutobi's reasons for ordering the children to be placed with two different guardians; to make it harder for someone to find both boys. Once both rooms had been prepared, Torifu activated the security seals that would prevent anyone aside from himself or those he brought with him from entering the rooms. The last thing he did before leaving that part of the building was to create a pair of Transportation Scrolls (one for each room) that he would use to transport the children into their new rooms without the risk of someone seeing them being moved.

That done, the masked Torifu made his way up to the private hospital room that held the two children whose lives and futures had been placed into his hands. It was time to make both children disappear.

Eighteen minutes later, Torifu stepped into the room and got his first up close look at the two children his subordinates had pulled from Orochimaru's secret laboratory just four days prior. The child that had been designated as test subject one-eighty-one had medium brown hair, dark eyes, and light skin. Over all, his appearance was average and forgettable; which would make it easy for the child to blend in with the other children his age. By comparison, test subject one-thirty-eight had black hair, leaf green eyes, and pale skin that was nearly white. And while his hair and skin color weren't that big of a deal, the child's eyes would give him away in a heartbeat since they were so riveting and unique.

He would have to do something about the kid's eyes before his new guardian took custody of him.

Both boys had turned to face him the moment he stepped into the room and while the dark eyed boy quickly lost interest in him, the green eyed boy continued to stare at him. If Torifu had been a lesser man, he might have felt unnerved by the unwavering stare. As it was, the intense stare only made the ANBU Commander more curious about the boy. Smiling behind his mask, Torifu dismissed the hidden ANBU in the room with a simple gesture before he crossed the room to stand directly beside the child's bed; those green eyes tracking him the entire way.

"Do I frighten you, child?" Torifu inquired when he noticed the boy subtly shifting away from him. The boy stopped moving and shook his head in denial even as he tightened his hold on the tea cup he had clutched in his little hands.

"He thinks you're going to take his tea away," the other boy stated without looking up from the picture book he had spread across his lap.

"His tea…?" Torifu repeated with confusion as his eyes dropped down to the drink in question; an action that made the green eyed boy eye him distrustfully as he curled protectively over his cup.

"All of the adults keep taking his tea from him each time they check on us."

"I see," Torifu automatically replied even though he was still completely confused. He shook off his confusion a moment later and sat down in the chair beside the child's bed so that he was no longer looming over the child. He then simply watched the child watching him until the opening of the door drew the child's attention away from him.

"I brought you the samples that you requested, Kasai," Shoichi stated in his usual monotone as he stepped up beside the chair Torifu had claimed.

"Thank you for bringing them," Torifu replied as he accepted the scrolls that the younger man passed to him and ignored the two dozen Kikaichu that escaped from Shoichi's jacket to attach themselves to the two children.

"Was there anything else that you needed from me?"

"Not at the moment but I would appreciate it if you said nothing of this matter to anyone."

"I took the initiative to doctor the evidence files to insure that those samples will not be missed before I made my way here," Shoichi murmured before he tipped his head to one side as the Kikaichu he'd sent to study the children's chakra returned to him. The stoic man then stepped closer to Torifu as he suggested, "Based upon what I just learned from my Kikaichu, it is only logical that I advise you to find a way to find a way to mask the green-eyed child's chakra signature if you wish to hide the boy. Otherwise, the corrupted nature of the child's chakra will expose his identity to those who are capable of recognizing individual signatures."

Shoichi took his leave immediately after delivering his advice; a pair of green eyes following him out of the room before they cut back to Torifu the instant the door closed behind the Aburame. For the next several minutes, the only sound that filled the room was the soft shifting of fabric on fabric and the faint crackle of paper pages being turned. The staring contest between Torifu and the green eyed child resumed during that time and the man wondered what it was about his mask that fascinated the child so much. He also couldn't help but be impressed that the child hadn't grown bored yet since young children had notoriously short attention spans.

That thought had barely passed through his mind before the child in question abruptly turned away from him and focused his attention on the cup in his hands. Over the next twenty minutes, Torifu observed the silent child nurse the cup of cold tea in his hands. Each sip the child took was savored with utmost diligence and the forty-seven year old wondered just what it was about the tea that evoked that reaction in the child.

He didn't think it was the act of actually drinking, since he suspected that the child would have treated his soup in the same fashion and all of the reports he'd read since the boy had woken said the child always guzzled down his soup in record time. No, there was something about the tea itself that inspired the child to make each cup last as long as humanly possible but Torifu couldn't pinpoint what it could be since he knew so little about the child.

The silence was partially broken the moment the green eyed child drank the last bit of tea in his cup. The kid had let out a Nara worthy sigh that ended in a soft disappointed whine upon discovering he'd swallowed the very last drop. Torifu found himself needing to restrain the chuckle of amusement he felt building in his chest over the adorable picture the kid made pouting over the empty cup the way he was. He got the feeling that the boy wouldn't appreciate being laughed at.

"Do you want my tea?" the other boy asked as he looked up from his book once more. Green-Eyes (as Torifu silently dubbed the child) perked up as he glanced towards his fellow survivor and tipped his head to one side. "I'm not thirsty, so you can have it if you'd like."

The dark eyed boy then gave the wheeled table-tray that held his tea a push so that it rolled across the space between the two beds. The green eyed boy deftly traded his empty cup for the full cup on the table before sending the table back to the other child's bed. Torifu was then granted the privilege of hearing the green eyed boy speak for the first time since he had been found as he shyly whispered a quiet, "Thanks."

"You're welcome," the dark eyed boy replied with a smile before he turned his attention back to his book.

Torifu was trying to decide whether or not he should ask the child a few questions while he appeared to be in a talkative mood (sure it was only one word but that still more than he'd said since he'd first woken up) when Furofuki arrived with the two bodies that he'd requested. The stately kunoichi (who was just a few years younger than Torifu) passed him the scroll containing the children's remains without a word; her eyes bouncing between both boys. The woman than took her leave after tersely agreeing to forget about the contents of the scroll she'd just passed to him.

Once she was gone, Torifu waited another half an hour before he stood up and immediately felt the eyes of both children on him once more. He spared the door a brief glance before he addressed both children in a low voice, "It is not safe for the two of you to stay in this room any longer; too many people know that you are here and any one of them might tell Orochimaru where to find you."

The response to his words was immediate and Torifu felt a brief twinge of regret for manipulating the children but he quickly crushed it. He needed a reason for moving them out of the room they had been in since they were pulled out of the lab and he needed subject one-thirty-eight angry or frightened enough to activate his Kekkei Genkai. Torifu wasn't disappointed; Green-Eyes soundlessly snarled the moment Orochimaru's name had passed through Torifu's lips while at the same time, the temperature in the room rapidly sank to below freezing as ice formed over the child's bed.

Moving around the beds as a small forest of ice spikes began forming, Torifu prepped one of the transportation scrolls as he approached the dark eyed child and instructed, "I need you to stay calm, child; I am going to transport you to another room where you will be safe. I will come to check on you after I move your friend to another room and clean up things in here."

The child offered no resistance and a brief pulse of chakra saw him vanishing in a puff of smoke. Torifu then returned his attention to the other child and noted that there were thick branches now growing amidst the icy spires that had sprung up around the other child. A grim smile briefly crossed his face over the fact that his plan was working perfectly so far; he just had to calm the kid down and move him out of the room now so that he could finish staging the boys' deaths.

Maneuvering through growing mess took some fancy footwork to avoid being skewered by the ice or wrapped up in the growing branches but Torifu eventually managed to reach the bed. He then reached out and grabbed hold of the child's chin in order to get his attention. Both ice and wood froze the moment those green eyes locked on his and Torifu gave a mental sigh of relief that he hadn't needed to knock the kid out in order to move him.

"I understand that you are angry and scared but I need for you to calm down. We are not going to allow Orochimaru to take you again. Right now, I need you to be brave so that I can move you into a different room where you will be safe. Can you do that for me?" The boy stared at him for a long minute before he slowly nodded his head. "Thank you; I will come to check on you in a little bit after I clean up here."

Torifu prepped the second transportation scroll at that point and soon sent the boy out of the room with another small puff of smoke. The ANBU Commander then unsealed the bodies that Furofuki had delivered to him, doctored the corpses with seals so that they vaguely resembled the two survivors, and positioned them in the now empty beds. Another eight minutes was spent shifting the ice around so that it looked like it had been subject one-thirty-eight's Kekkei Genkai that killed both children. Once that had been done, he opened up the two scrolls containing the rotting remains of the twisted tree and artfully arranged them about the room.

Over all, the room looked eerily similar to the room in which the green-eyed child had been found – minus the broken ceiling and fifty foot tall tree that had destroyed said ceiling. Hopefully, it would be enough to convince most people that the two children had died tonight. He knew there would be a small number of individuals that suspected this was a cover up (not counting his two accomplices) but he didn't need to worry about them because by the time they figured out who had staged the deaths, the children would be safely in the care of their new guardians if everything played out as planned.

Stage set, Torifu stepped outside of the room and passed a slip of paper to the masked guards that had been hovering around the door since he kicked them out of the room earlier. He then headed towards his office so that he could be in place when the alarm was raised; pausing only once to create a pair of earth clones that would keep an eye on the two children for the time being. Once seated behind his desk, Torifu began drafting the needed seals to change Green-Eyes' appearance, block Orochimaru's name as a trigger for the child's anger to prevent him from drawing attention to himself with the uncontrolled use of the Hyouton, and mask the child's chakra signature.

After a brief internal debate, he also made similar seals for the other boy just to be safe.

* * *

_December 20, 0283 AtD, 2:29 PM  
Konohagakure no Sato, Hi no Kuni_

Subject one-thirty-eight was only half finished with the cup of tea that had come with his lunch when a trio of adults suddenly appeared in his room in a large puff of smoke. The three and a half year old scowled and quickly covered the top of his cup with one small hand while he eyed the three adults warily; he rarely ever had visitors at this time of day and when he did, they usually took away his tea. Like when the masked man had come and done something to him to change the color of his hair to a dark red and the color of his eyes to a deep blue the previous day.

As soon as the smoke cleared the boy easily recognized the blonde lady and the masked man; both of them frequent visitors to his room. The other man with the two familiar faces was a complete stranger though and number one-thirty-eight took a moment to study him. The man had dark slate gray hair that was pulled back into a short pony tail, thick eyebrows, dark eyes, and more than a few wrinkles. He was dressed in a mesh armor shirt, a long brown tunic-vest secured with an olive green sash, a pair of black pants with bandages wrapped around his lower legs, and black sandals with thin straps that left most of his feet bare.

"Child, this is your new guardian; Maruboshi Kosuke," the masked man stated as he gestured towards the unfamiliar man the moment that one-thirty-eight had finished his inspection of the stranger. "You will be leaving with him today."

One-thirty-eight wasn't certain what to think or feel as he glanced between the masked man and the man that was supposed to be his guardian. He hadn't really thought that he'd be living anywhere other than the new room that the masked man had sent him to three days earlier either.

"Hello, young man," Kosuke greeted kindly as he gave a polite half bow to the child while subject one-thirty-eight just stared at him in return.

"I will leave the two of you to get to know one another," the masked man interjected into the awkward silence that filled the room at that point. "I'll return in about two hours with a Transportation Scroll to send you on your way."

One-thirty-eight turned to watch the masked man leave in a puff of smoke before he refocused on his new guardian once more; the child completely ignoring the woman. Kosuke crossed the short distance that separated the two of them at that point and sat down in the chair situated beside one-thirty-eight's bed.

"You are much smaller and younger than I was led to believe," Kosuke stated with a nervous smile and the child had an urge to tell the man that he looked far too old to be a guardian but held his tongue. "You are also much quieter than most children I have met."

"That is an understatement. The gaki hasn't said a single word in my presence and I'm beginning to suspect that Kasai only dreamed he heard him say anything the other night," the woman groused as she stepped up to the bed and reached out towards one-thirty-eight with glowing green hands so she could scan him yet again.

"Maybe he just gets tongue-tied around beautiful young ladies."

"Flattery will get you nowhere, old man."

"Can't blame a man for trying," Kosuke countered with a soft laugh before he leaned around the woman to ask one-thirty-eight a question. "Do you have a name, young man?" One-thirty-eight shook his head no and near scowled at the man; he was growing weary of the adults asking him each time he met a new one. "Would you like to have a name?"

That question caught the child off guard; no one else had asked him if he wanted a name. His little brow furrowed in confusion as he wondered whether or not he wanted a name. He couldn't help but wonder what good it would do to have a name when he had a number before he froze as he recalled the fact that it had been Orochimaru that had given him a number instead of a name. The last thing he wanted was anything that _that_ man had given him.

Stormy eyes then glanced up to meet his guardian's dark eyes before he timidly replied, "Yes, please."

The sound of his voice immediately caused the blonde woman to jerk back in shock while his guardian simply nodded in response to the answer before he asked, "Is there a particular name that you'd like to have?" That question would receive a negative response as one-thirty-eight had no idea what he would like to be called. "Would you like me to help you pick out a name?"

A tentative nod was given that time and Kosuke smiled warmly before he gave a thoughtful hum as he closely inspected subject one-thirty-eight. After a few minutes, the man began listing off several popular names but one-thirty-eight didn't care for any of those more common names. The woman had grouchily tried to convince Kosuke to name the boy gaki but the man had only laughed and shook his head; something for which said boy was grateful.

After rejecting more than thirty names, Kosuke asked, "Since you don't seem fond of the usual names; what is your favorite animal?"

"Tigers," the boy replied after a moment's consideration; the pictures he had seen of the large cats in the books that the masked man had given to him look through when he was bored had been impressive.

"You are too small to be a tiger but you are just the right size to be a tiger's cub," Kosuke mused thoughtfully as he studied the child once again. "Yes, I believe that Kojimaru would be a very fitting name for someone that will grow up to be a fierce shinobi. What do you think, young man?"

"It is different," the child carefully replied as he silently repeated the name several times. "I like it."

"Then Kojimaru shall be your name from this day forward," Kosuke confirmed with a proud smile and one-thirty-eight felt the same comforting curl of warmth thread through him that he usually only felt when he was drinking tea. "So, Kojimaru-kun, what else do you like besides tigers?"

The newly named Kojimaru blinked a few times in response to being addressed by his new name for the first time before he shyly answered, "Tea."

"I am rather fond of tea myself; especially on cold nights. I also enjoy a nice spot of stew or a plate of taiyaki to go with it. Do you have a favorite kind of food that you like to have with your tea?"

Kojimaru just shrugged; he couldn't recall ever eating anything but soup and while the soup he'd been given tasted good, he didn't think he liked it enough to call it his favorite. A broken memory of a warm, sugary treat loaded with chunks of gooey chocolate and crunchy peanuts flitted through his mind for a single heartbeat but it was gone before he could think of what the treats had been called.

"He hasn't exactly had a chance to sample any solid food since he woke up and prior to that he spent a minimum of two years hooked up to a PICC Line and sustained by TPN Nutrition," the woman interjected. "I seriously doubt that the gaki even remembers what it is like to eat solid food."

"Well, it is a good think that I like to cook then, ne? It will be a treat to cook something different for each meal until we learn his likes and dislikes together while I teach him how to wield a proper ladle."

"He's a little young to be wielding ladles or knives, Maruboshi-san," the woman dryly pointed out. "I also recommend that you proceed with caution in regards to his diet; I am uncertain how his body will handle solid foods. He hasn't had any problems adjusting to an all liquid diet but there is no guarantee that the same thing would be true if he were to eat anything too heavy. I'd stick to bland foods for a little while as well for the same reason."

"I shall keep that in mind when planning out his meals. As for wielding ladles and knives, he is old enough to start learning how to cook and he will be properly supervised. Though, I am curious to know exactly how old my ward is. Do you know when your birthday is, Kojimaru-kun?"

Kojimaru frowned as his eyes grew unfocused when he turned his thoughts inwards in response to the question. Little snippets of memories assaulted him, teasing him with a life he no longer remembered; a flash of long red hair, a bare glimpse of a large black dog stealing a cake, the brief sound of a deep laugh, and a mere whisper of a song whose words no longer made sense to him. He also had a brief image of a calendar with a bright red circle around the very last day.

When he finally came back to himself, the half filled cup of tea he'd been holding slipped out of his limp hands as Kojimaru was filled with a deep aching emptiness as the tears he didn't know he was crying froze into tiny crystals the moment they left his eyes.

"Is there something wrong, Kojimaru-kun?" Kosuke inquired with some concern.

The child gave a single jerky nod that morphed into a slow head shake; those broken shards of his past confused him far too much for him to understand what they meant. After a moment he scrubbed his face clear of the frozen tears drops and mournfully stared at the spreading tea stain on his blankets before he finally answered the original question he'd been asked, "July thirty-first."

"I beg your pardon?" the woman asked in confusion as she finished scanning him.

"My birthday is on July thirty-first," Kojimaru clarified with a sniff before he abruptly turned away from both adults and curled up beneath his covers.

"Well that was unexpected," the woman muttered before she let out a long sigh. "I am finished here; your new ward is physically fine. Mentally, well, only time will tell. I will leave a copy of the child's medical file with Kasai when I leave so that you will have it in the event that any problems crop up at a later point. Kasai also has several scrolls that were collected from my grandfather's library that the boy will need when he is ready to start his training his stolen Mokuton. I do not know if Kasai will have anything to help with the other half of the problem but you can always ask him."

"Thank you, Tsunade-hime."

Two heartbeats later, Kojimaru heard the soft pop of sound that always heralded the arrival and departure of his visitors alongside the puff of cloying smoke. He thought maybe that he was all alone in his room now until the sound of muffled humming reached his ears. It wasn't until he heard the shrill whistle of a tea kettle sounding that he drudged up enough curiosity to sit up and poke his head free of his blankets. He was a little stunned to find Kosuke preparing a pot of tea on a fire that was contained in an old coffee can in the middle of the room.

"Would you prefer green tea or orange tea, Kojimaru-kun?"

"Orange…?" Kojimaru half asked as he crawled out from the under the covers completely and moved to the edge of the bed so that he could better see what his new guardian was up to.

"Is orange tea your favorite then?"

"I don't know."

"Ah, would still like to try the orange tea or did you want green tea instead?"

"Orange," Kojimaru repeated more firmly; the idea that there were different kinds of tea appealing to him.

"Very well, it will only take a few minutes to steep the tea leaves. While we are waiting for the tea, would you like me to help you out of the hospital pajamas that you are wearing so that you can get dressed?"

Kojimaru waited until the man looked up in his direction before he shrugged his shoulders to indicate that it didn't matter to him. His guardian let out a soft chuckle before he rose to his feet, moved up beside the bed, and gently helped the three and a half year old strip out of his clothes. The man then pulled out a small scroll like the one that the masked man had used to move him into his new room from a pocket on the inside of his tunic-vest.

Kojimaru flinched a bit when Kosuke bite his thumb hard enough to draw blood (the coppery scent stirring his darker memories) before he leaned closer out of curiosity when the man wiped his bloody digit across one of the symbols on the open scroll. He then felt a small spike of energy and to the child's surprise, a burst of smoke escaped from the paper and when it cleared, there was a small pile of clothes and a pair of blue sandals sitting on top of the scroll.

"Where did the clothes come from?" Kojimaru asked as Kosuke picked up the brown pants and helped him put them on his legs over the plain white underwear he was still wearing.

"Kasai-sama bought them for you so that you would have something to wear when we left."

"How did they get here?"

"They were stored inside the scroll so that they would be easy to carry."

"How did fit in there?"

"Do you see the symbols on the paper? Those are a special type of seal called Storage Seals and when you channel a bit of chakra into the seals, it allows you to lock items into the seal. To get those items back, you just have to channel more chakra into the seals. Some seals also require a bit of blood to activate them; like this scroll did."

"Why?"

"Blood Seals add a level of security to a seal that protects a seal from being used or opened by just anyone. Blood is also very powerful and sacrificing a bit of blood means that you need less chakra to open or activate a seal."

"Oh. Doesn't it hurt to bite your finger?"

"It used to; I've bitten my thumbs so many times that I don't really feel it anymore though."

"Are you going to bite my fingers?"

"No, I am not going to bite your fingers."

"Are you going to make me bite my fingers?"

"No, I will not make you bite your own fingers," Kosuke assured him as he pulled the dark brown shirt down over Kojimaru's head before he helped Kojimaru sit back down so he could slip the sandals onto his feet. "However, if you wish to use seals when you get older, then you will need to knick your fingers in order to provide the blood for those seals that need them. No one is going to force you to use those types of seals though."

"Oh. Okay. Is the tea ready?"

"It should be," Kosuke answered with another soft laugh as he reached out and ruffled Kojimaru's hair.

Kojimaru cringed at the touch before he froze in place as he tried to figure out exactly what the man had just done to him. It hadn't hurt but at the same time it had felt rather weird. He soon forgot all about the oddness of the touch when the man returned with two cups of tea and sat down on the bed beside the three year old. Three seconds later, Kojimaru had a warm cup of tea cradled in his hands once more. Lifting the cup up to his face, Kojimaru sniffed at the steam for a moment before he took a very careful sip of the tea.

He was more than a little surprised that it tasted so different than the tea he was usually given; it had a more earthy taste with just a hint of spice. It was a bit bitter too but not enough to ruin the rest of the flavor. The orange tea also didn't fill him with the same comforting warmth that the other tea had but at the same time he quite liked the way it tasted. He would still end up nursing that cup of tea for the duration of his time in that small room while he listened to Kosuke talk about himself and the village where they would be living. Occasionally, he would answer a few of the questions that his guardian directed towards him as well but mostly he just listened because he'd grown tired of talking.

The two hours given to them by the masked man, whom he learned was the Kasai person that Kosuke kept mentioning, passed by very quickly and before Kojimaru knew it Kasai was poofing back into the room. All of the nervousness that Kojimaru had felt when his unexpected visitors first appeared two hours earlier returned two-fold at that point. The idea that he would be leaving the safety of the little room he'd been kept in for the past three days scared him. He couldn't help but remember the pain he had felt for so long.

"Are you still willing to accept guardianship?" Kasai inquired the moment the smoke from his arrival cleared.

"Hai."

"I suspected as much based upon what Tsunade reported to me but I needed to be certain," Kasai replied with a nod as he handed several scrolls to Kosuke. "The red scroll will deliver the two of you to a secluded clearing just off of the road two days travel from the village. The clearing has been secured for your protection. The yellow scroll contains the back story that was created to validate your guardianship, a signed document from the Hokage authorizing you to be out of the village, all of the documents you will need to get your ward into the village without any hassles once you return, and a modest sum of money to off-set the cost of feeding and clothing the child for the next five years."

"The white scroll holds enough supplies to last for two weeks. I also took the liberty of collecting your usual equipment from your home and made certain to activate the various array of security seals you placed around the house and gardens when I was finished. Two ANBU Guards will be shadowing you until you reach the village gates to insure that nothing happens to the child. And lastly, the blue, brown, and green scrolls contain a collection of jutsu scrolls from the Senju Clan and ANBU Archives; dark blue for suiton, light blue for fuuton, brown for doton, and green for the Mokuton. At this time we do not currently have any scrolls on the Hyouton but Jiraiya has promised to look into that during his travels."

Kasai paused for a moment before he asked, "Do either of you have any questions? No? Then good luck and safe journey to you both."

Kasai left right after that and Kosuke stood up and tucked away the handful of scrolls he'd been given before he turned to Kojimaru and instructed, "Please hurry up and finish your tea while I pack up my things, Kojimaru-kun."

Kojimaru pouted over the order to rush through the last of his tea; it was hard to taste the tea if you just gulped it right down. At least he'd been allowed to savor most of the cup he'd been given. The possibility that his new guardian might make him more tea at some point helped mollify the three year old as he reluctantly complied with the order. As soon as he swallowed the last drop, the cup he'd been using was sealed into a scroll with the other stuff Kosuke had used to make the tea. The man then lifted Kojimaru off of the bed and carried him to the toilet that sat on the far side of the room so that he could empty his bladder before they left.

Twenty minutes later, Kojimaru found himself out in the middle of a forest for the second time in his life. And just like the first time that he'd ended up surrounded by towering trees, the child once known as Harry Potter would find his world turned upside down as the rules of his life once again changed.

* * *

**Translations:** Japanese to English

Doton – earth  
Fuuton – wind  
Gaki – brat  
Hai – yes  
Hyouton – ice  
Kojimaru – koji (tiger cub) + maru (a suffix often added to boys' names)  
Mokuton – wood  
Suiton – water

**Medical Terms:**

PICC – Peripherally Inserted Central Catheter  
TPN (TPN Nutrition) – Total Parenteral Nutrition (liquid nutrients administered via PICC line)

* * *

**11-14-15:** _Minor edits made to chapter to fix spelling/grammar mistakes and removed unnecessary author's notes._


	5. The Homecoming

**Disclaimer:** _All HP characters are the property of JKR, the WB, and respective publishing companies and all Naruto characters are the property of Masashi Kishimoto. This is nothing more than a simple FanFiction that I have written. I have made no money from this or any of the other stories I have posted on this or other sites._

**Warnings:** _Mild to moderate violence, character death, alternate universe (i.e. kiss canon goodbye), OCC behaviors and personalities, a number of original characters and obscure canon characters to flesh out family trees, random chosen last names to give a number of characters surnames, and who knows what else._

**AN:** _This story is self-beta'd; so there may be occasional grammatical or spelling errors that crop up every now and then and for those I apologize in advance._

* * *

Chapter Five: The Homecoming

_December 20, 0283 AtD, 5:03 PM  
Outside of Konohagakure no Sato, Hi no Kuni_

Kojimaru was snapped out of his mild panic attack (due to finding himself in the forest once more) the moment his feet touched the ground. He turned his face upwards to stare at his new guardian with wide, artificial blue eyes as the temperature of the clearing they were in dropped several degrees.

"I believe it would be best to camp here for a while," Kosuke stated as he looked down to meet the child's intense and frightened gaze. "Would you like to help me set up our camp and start supper?"

The three and a half year old gave a tentative nod and his guardian smiled at him and ruffled his hair again. Kojimaru's little hands immediately flew up to protect his hair, garnering a laugh from the man. He slowly lowered his hands again a moment later when he was given his first task; clear away the leaves inside of a circle that Kosuke drew on the ground with his foot. Plopping himself on the ground beside the circle, Kojimaru reached out to push away the leaves only to stop when his hands came into contact with the dead leaves.

The top layer of leaves was dry, like paper, and crackled beneath his hands as he rested part of his weight on them. The layer directly under the dry leaves was cool to the touch and slightly damp. And the very bottom layer was very moist and crumbling. Fascinated by the different textures, Kojimaru forgot all about clearing away the leaves and simply flopped down on his belly and dug his fingers deeply into the layer of natural compost. He even buried his nose in a pile of leaves at one point and breathed in deeply; the scent of earth and decaying plants heady and new.

By the time his guardian came to check on his progress some fifteen minutes later, Kojimaru was covered from head to toe in decaying leaves and dirt; his face flushed with excitement and his eyes sparkling with life for the first time in over two years. The moment he remembered that he was supposed to be clearing away the leaves and not playing in them, Kojimaru froze in fear as he stared up at his guardian. What happened next would have a large impact on Kojimaru's future and on his relationship with his guardian.

Instead of getting angry at him for playing, Kosuke merely laughed heartily as he knelt down to brush the dirt and leaves off of the child's face. The man then encouraged Kojimaru to help him clear the ground; piling the leaves off to one side well away from what was to be the fire pit. Kosuke then gave the three year old permission to play in the pile of leaves (which ended up fairly large due to Kosuke raking up loads of extra leaves). Kojimaru's laughter would fill the clearing for nearly an hour as he gleefully dove into the leaf pile and swam through the leaves.

Unbeknownst to the happy child, all of the adults that were watching over him were extremely pleased to see him acting his age for once. The fact that he was openly laughing and giggling as he played was just a bonus.

It was with great reluctance that Kojimaru abandoned his pile of rotting leaves when Kosuke announced that supper was ready towards the end of that hour. He barely sat still long enough for the man to brush the majority of the dirt and debris from his clothes before washing his hands and face with warm water that had been heated by the campfire. The three year old would settle right down the moment his guardian passed him a cup of tea though and it was like he was a completely different child.

That night would also mark the first solid meal that Kojimaru had eaten in over two years. It wasn't much of a meal, just two ounces of extra moist rice and a small bowl of thick broth that had not been watered down like the soup he'd been served since he'd first woken up in the white room. Kojimaru would end up falling asleep shortly after finishing his rice; the hour of play in combination with the full feeling in his stomach from the filling meal sending him into Morpheus's arms before he could finish his tea that night.

Kojimaru felt more than a little disoriented when he woke up snuggled up inside of a sleeping bag beneath a canopy of green leaves the next morning. The memory of the previous day would return in a rush the moment a smiling Kosuke greeted him with a warm hello and a fresh cup of tea. A simple breakfast of fruit (mostly made up of fresh banana and pear slices) was passed to him next. After he finished eating, he was urged to finish his tea and any protests he might have made died when he was told that the two of them would spend the day exploring the forest and searching for wild mushrooms.

As the two of them tramped through the undergrowth, Kosuke took the time to name each of the plants they encountered; taking special care to point out the ones that were edible, the ones that had healing properties, and the ones that were poisonous. Kosuke also patiently taught him how to harvest the different parts of the various plants without killing the entire plant. The lessons were rather repetitive but the subject was interesting enough that Kojimaru's attention never wavered during the short lectures; even if it would take a while for those lessons to stick.

It helped that Kosuke gave Kojimaru plenty of breaks in between lessons to prevent him from growing bored. The fact that his merged chakra and magic was so nature oriented (influenced heavily by his magic and the Mokuton) didn't hurt either. Additionally, the more time he spent in the forest beneath the trees, the more attuned he grew to the trees as the Mokuton inside of him sought to connect to the living trees around him. Kojimaru had no idea what was happening to him though, he just knew that the longer they stayed in the forest, the more comfortable he felt and the less frightened he was of the shadows beneath the trees.

The two of them would end up staying in the warded clearing for seven days. Each day, the two of them spent hunting through the forest for a specific type of plant, moss, or fungus while their unseen guards watched over them from the trees above. In between collecting the required items and numerous lessons on plant lore, Kojimaru was taught how to jump over small obstacles, climb up trees, and move through the forest without leaving a trail. He was also encouraged to chase after bugs, splash in puddles, and sneak up on the harmless wildlife they crossed paths with; the latter strangely easy for the boy since most animals were actually drawn to him.

Kojimaru would grow stronger every day; the fresh air and exercise doing his body and his mind a world of good. The adjustments to his diet also helped; his body finally getting a chance to function the way it was meant to without any outside interference. The only two things that remained unchanged were the long periods of time where he just didn't feel like talking and his tendency to make a single cup of tea last for hours. Kosuke quickly discovered that the best way to avoid losing half the morning waiting for him to finish his tea, was to fill a bamboo canteen with tea and let Kojimaru to carry his tea with him. The offer of a new tea flavor also quickly became an incentive to gain the child's cooperation when the boy's stubbornness reared its head.

After spending hours searching and playing beneath the trees, the evenings would be spent in lessons of a different sort as Kosuke taught him how to read and write, told him fables and fairy tales, and started teaching him how to cook. And while he might be a little young to use a knife or work near the fire, Kojimaru was more than capable of measuring out spices and herbs, gathering sticks and small branches for the fire, and rinsing the wild fruits and vegetables that they gathered during their daytime explorations.

The most important lessons during those evenings, from a shinobi's viewpoint, were the ones that desensitized the three year old to the sight and scent of blood and death and the ones on maintaining control of his emotions; specifically his anger. While most children were allowed to choose whether or not they would attend the academy so they could take up a hitai-ate and kunai in defense of the village, Kojimaru (like his fellow survivor) wasn't going to have a choice. His choice had been made for him the moment Orochimaru had performed that first operation.

There were many civilians and at least a few shinobi that would be abhorred by the mere thought of forcing a child down the path of a shinobi but Kojimaru's life would depend upon him growing strong enough to protect himself. Too many people would seek to use him as a weapon or cut him open to see what made him tick the instant they suspected that he had not been born with either one of the two Kekkei Genkai that he possessed. Orochimaru, most especially, would stop at nothing to reclaim Kojimaru and the other boy if he learned that either child had survived; both for the power they held and for what they represented as the only known living carriers of implanted Kekkei Genkai (not counting the stolen and transplanted eyes from those born with a doujutsu).

It was also far safer for the entire village if Kojimaru learned how to control both of his Kekkei Genkai due to how volatile his Hyouton tended to be (the boy's emotions unfailingly drawing upon that ability first) and the amount of damage that the Mokuton could potentially do if it escaped his control. The same would hold true in the event that the other boy activated his dormant Mokuton at any point in the future.

That was one of the reasons why both boys had been placed with guardians that had been selected from the ranks of active shinobi; to insure that they were properly prepared for the life they would be expected to live the moment they earned their hitai-ate. And while Kosuke was not a Jounin, the man was exceptionally skilled and he had been trained by all three of Konoha's Hokage at some point in his life and trained with a number of other well known individuals that had gone on to make a name for themselves.

* * *

_December 29, 0283 AtD, 9:53 AM  
Konohagakure no Sato, Hi no Kuni_

Kojimaru stumbled as he caught sight of the huge wall rising above the trees; the only thing that prevented him from falling over was the hold his guardian had on his hand. The three year old was torn between awe and fear as he stared at the enormous construct.

"So, what is your first impression of Konoha, Kojimaru?" Kosuke inquired as the wall continued to rise into the sky as they walked closer to the village gates.

"So big," Kojimaru whispered without taking his eyes off of the walls.

"Yes, the outer wall is quite big; it was designed that way to protect the village from attacks."

"Attacks…?" Kojimaru asked worriedly as he pulled his eyes from the still growing wall to stare up at his guardian.

"There is no need to worry, Kojimaru-kun; there are shinobi that patrol the walls around the clock to guard the village against such attacks; rare as they are."

"Oh," Kojimaru murmured as he returned his attention to the wall.

Just a few minutes later, the village gates came into view and this time Kojimaru froze in his tracks as his eyes fell upon the large throng of people moving back and forth just on the other side of the open gate. He'd never before seen so many people all in once place. In fact, he hadn't even known that it was possible for so many people to exist; his entire life up to this point had been lived in near complete seclusion. Any awe he might have felt for his first glimpse of a real village was washed away in fear over the presence of so many strangers. Kojimaru didn't even feel his guardian sweep him up into his arms at that point.

"What is wrong, Kojimaru?"

"Why are there so many people? Where did they all come from?"

"They live here; Konohagakure is one of the five largest hidden villages within the Elemental Nations. It is also the tenth largest village within all of Hi no Kuni."

Kojimaru automatically curled into Kosuke's arms in search of comfort over the knowledge that so many people lived in the village that his guardian said would be his home for now on. He hadn't completely forgotten the faceless people that had hurt him while he was trapped in the dark room even if their blurred memories didn't stir his anger. The three year old's attention was drawn away from the crowd of people going about their business when he heard a voice address his guardian. Turning, he caught sight of a man wearing a dark blue long sleeved shirt, dark blue pants, a padded green vest, and a dark blue headband with a metal plate on it tied around his forehead.

"Hey, Kosuke, who have you got there? It's not like you to pick up strays when you leave the village."

"This is my godson, Kojimaru. I was called to Kisaragi no Sato to collect him after his parents were killed by bandits just a few weeks ago," Kosuke explained as he passed over the packet containing the identification papers and custodial paperwork that Kasai had forged for the child.

"My condolences; were you close to his parents?"

"Not exactly, they were old clients that I had escorted between villages a time or two. I did not even know that they had named me their son's godfather until I received notice of the couple's death back on the twentieth. The mayor of the village believed that the child would have a better chance at a decent life if he was raised here in Konoha since Kisaragi is frequently plagued by bandits. The other villagers also felt no obligation to take him in due to the fact that neither he nor his parents had been born in the village."

"That's kind of sad but he will have a better life here. Are you going to enroll him in the Academy?"

"Yes, he is a bright child with excellent hand and eye coordination. His chakra reserves are also above average for a child his age."

"Well, good luck," Takeshi replied as he passed the paperwork back to Kosuke after he'd taken the time to make certain everything was in order. "My sister claims that all children are little monsters and my nieces and nephews have only shown me proof that her claims were true each time she's asked me to look after them for her."

Both adults laughed while Kojimaru scowled at the implication that he was a monster. He soon forgot about the insult as Kosuke carried him away from the gate and deeper into the village and within just a few steps, the two of them were swallowed by the crowd. Kojimaru whimpered and buried his face against Kosuke's shoulder.

"You don't have to be afraid of the crowd, Kojimaru; I will not let anyone harm you nor will I allow anyone to take you away from me. You are going to have to get used to being around large crowds eventually, so you might as well sit up and get a good look at your new home."

Kojimaru reluctantly complied; lifting his head and letting his eyes take in the various buildings and stalls that lined the street they were on instead of just focusing on the faces of the people moving all around the pair. It didn't take long for his eyes to be drawn to the three large faces that were carved into the mountain straight ahead of them and Kojimaru started when he recognized the one on the very end. He opened his mouth to ask his guardian why the faces were on the mountain and who the third man was but closed it a heartbeat later as he caught sight of the crowd once more out of the corner of his eye.

Roughly fifteen minutes later, the two of them approached what Kojimaru would learn was the most important building in the entire village. The Hokage's Tower was made up of three circular buildings that were connected together and surrounded by a smaller version of the great wall that protected the village. The smaller two buildings bracketed the center building and had trees growing out of the roofs. And while the tower wasn't the tallest building in the village, it was by far the most intimidating building.

There was an unmistakable presence to the red walls that Kojimaru could feel even before they passed through the gate in the protective wall.

As his guardian carried him up the stairs that ran around the outside of the main building, Kojimaru angled his head back to catch one last glimpse of the three faces that were carved on the cliff-side above the tower. Once they were inside, they traversed the hallway that ran along the outermost wall of the building until they reached a set of double doors that had a desk set up outside of it. Seated behind the desk, there was a man wearing the same uniform as the guard at the gate; only he wore a bandana over his head with the same metal plate instead of a headband.

The man looked up as the pair approached the door and instructed, "Please state your name and business."

"Maruboshi Kosuke, I am here to petition for citizenship and enrollment into the Academy on behalf of my godson."

"What is your godson's name and age?"

"His name is Kojimaru and he is currently three and a half."

"Thank you; please wait here while I see if the Hokage has time to see you before his next appointment," the man stated as he put away his scroll and stood up.

As the man passed through the door, Kojimaru caught just the briefest glimpse of the room beyond before the door swung shut. It was just enough of a look for him to know that the room beyond was large and open. The room was soon forgotten though when a pair of teens dressed differently than the gate guard and the desk man walked passed where the boy and his guardian were waiting and his eyes followed them out of curiosity. Just before they disappeared around the curve of the hallway, the teen with dark hair that had been swept up into a spiky ponytail turned back around and met Kojimaru's eyes with intense dark eyes.

The teen paused in mid-step and half turned back towards them as he lifted one arm and lazily waved at Kojimaru and Kojimaru automatically returned the gesture without even realizing what he was doing. The teen smiled brightly at him in response before he turned away and hurried after his red-headed companion who had not stopped walking. Kojimaru was about to ask his guardian just who that teen was when the door opened and the man from the desk stepped back out into the hallway while holding the door open.

"The Sandaime will see you now, Maruboshi-san."

"Arigatou," Kosuke murmured as he walked through the open door.

"Ohayou, Kosuke; this is a pleasant surprise. I was not aware that you had a godson. Is this him? He is such a little thing; I can still remember when my sons were that small."

The familiar voice drew Kojimaru's attention to the old man seated behind the desk before he could fully examine the room. The old man looked much the same as he had the first time that the three year old had seen him; white hair, white beard, and lots of wrinkles. He was even wearing the same red robes and long white jacket.

"Good morning, Hokage-sama. And yes, this is my godson Kojimaru. Kojimaru-kun, this is the Sandaime Hokage, Sarutobi Hiruzen."

"It is a pleasure to meet you, Kojimaru-kun," the Hokage greeted as he smiled at Kojimaru. Kojimaru didn't say anything in reply though as he stared at the man in confusion; didn't the man remember him? "Not much of a talker, is he?"

"I think he's feeling a little overwhelmed; he's not used to seeing so many people in one place. He hasn't said a word since just after we passed through the villages gates. I'm sure he'll be talking a mile a minute the moment he feels comfortable once more."

"Nothing wrong with that, noisy children are always easier to keep track of," the Hokage countered with a grin. "It's the quiet ones you have to watch; they tend to sneak off and get into trouble every time you turn around." Both men shared a laugh over that which only confused Kojimaru even more. Once the laughter died, the Hokage stated, "My aide said you were petitioning for citizenship and enrollment in the Academy for the child. Is this correct?"

"Hai, Hokage-sama; his parents' dying wish was for me to take him in and the leader of the village where they had made their home felt the need to honor their wishes and sent for me shortly after their deaths. I have all of the required documentation here," Kosuke stated as he set Kojimaru down on his feet before he passed the packet of documents he was carrying over to the old man.

"Everything appears to be in order, I will have his identification papers written up and delivered to you by the end of the week. In the mean time, you'll need to keep him in the village until his papers are finished. As far as the Academy goes, there are no spaces available for the winter/spring term but I can put his name down for the summer/fall term. There are, of course, plenty of openings in the Civilian's Academy; if you wish for him to learn the basics before he is enrolled in the Shinobi Academy."

"That might be for the best; Kojimaru's educational opportunities were rather limited before I collected him."

"I will add his name to the list, then. The new term starts on the ninth of January and classes run from eight to two Monday through Saturday. Did you wish to extend your current leave of absence from duty while the child settles into his new home?"

"Hai, Hokage-sama; I'd like to have another week, at least, if it isn't a problem. That will give me more than enough time to make arrangements for someone to watch over Kojimaru during the afternoon and when I am out of the village on missions."

"I will give you until the ninth. After that, I will have you reassigned to morning guard duty on the wall until the summer term at the Academy begins; that will give you time to bond with your godson and allow him time to grow comfortable in the village before you are required to leave the village on missions."

"Arigatou, Hokage-sama."

"Did you need to apply for financial aide?"

"No; that won't be necessary. My godson's parents had left behind a modest sum of money and instructions for it to be used for Kojimaru's care as needed and I have my savings to fall back on, if necessary."

"Very well, was there anything else you needed?"

"No, that is everything."

"Then I will bid the two of you good day."

"Good day, Hokage-sama," Kosuke replied as he bowed to the Hokage before he scooped Kojimaru back up into his arms and retreated from the room.

Kojimaru stared at the old man over his guardian's shoulder until the door blocked his view. His eyes then wandered around the curved hallway as Kosuke headed for the exit. Just before they reached the door, Kojimaru's eyes caught a glimpse of his reflection in a passing window and he jumped a bit when he saw again the red hair and blue eyes. He had forgotten that the masked man had done something to hide his black hair and green eyes. The masked man had warned him that no one would be able to recognize him with his eyes and hair changed but Kojimaru hadn't really believed him at the time.

He briefly wondered if the changes were why the Hokage hadn't recognized him but soon forgot the matter entirely as his guardian moved back into the village proper and they were once again surrounded by a crowd of people. Kojimaru felt an urge to hide his face once again but was soon distracted from his discomfort when his guardian ran up the side of the nearest building. The toddler let out a squeal that was half excitement and half fear as he latched tightly onto Kosuke and stared down at the rapidly shrinking people. Just seconds later, the two of them were perched on the top of the build and Kojimaru could see almost the entire town spread out below him.

Kosuke gave him a minute to glance around before the man began jumping from roof to roof. Kojimaru soon began whooping gleefully as the wind whipped his hair around each time his guardian jumped. In that way, it didn't take long for the pair to cross the vast length of the village before they dropped back down to the ground. Kojimaru giggled breathlessly as his bright eyes lingered on the rooftops for a moment. He then turned his attention to the rather secluded neighborhood they'd landed in.

The first thing he noticed was the abundance of trees that were growing all around the handful of small houses that filled the quiet little street they were on. The second thing that he noticed was that the area felt much like the forest had felt; calm and peaceful. And the last thing he noticed was a similar presence to the one that he'd felt from the Hokage's Tower; only muted and far less intimidating. He would later learn that what he was sensing from various buildings were active security seals that had been carved and painted onto various buildings to protect them from intruders and would be thieves.

That would be about the same time that he (and by extension his guardian) learned that he was chakra sensitive; meaning that he could sense large concentrations of chakra. Being chakra sensitive was not to be confused with being a chakra sensor though; as while he could sense chakra on some level, he could not distinguish between different types of chakra or different chakra signatures. All that ability really allowed him to do was determine if a building or other object was layered in active seals or note the presence of individuals with larger than average chakra reserves.

Kosuke approached the house on the very end of the street and set Kojimaru down on his own two feet once more as he stated, "This is my home. It is rather on the small side but there is room enough for both of us and the property is large enough for you to run around in when you are not busy with lessons or practice. It is also securely warded, so you will not be able to leave the yard by yourself until you are old enough for me to key you into the seals. That also means that you do not have to be afraid of anyone attacking you while you are playing outside whether I am with you or not."

Kojimaru glanced up at Kosuke and nodded to show he had heard the man before he turned his eyes on the small house in front of them. The front yard was what could only be described as an ordered mess; there were two huge trees and all kinds of flowers, shrubs, and other plants growing out of the various planters and in dozens of clay pots that were scattered about. A few of the plants Kojimaru recognized as those that Kosuke had recently taught him could be eaten or used to make medicine. He would later learn that all of the plants that Kosuke grew on the property were useful in some way (even the poisonous ones).

Surrounding the front yard was a four foot whitewashed picket fence that disappeared around both sides of the house to enclose the back yard. To either side of the house was a pair of garden gates that separated the front yard from the back yard. In the front left corner of the front yard there was even a small peanut shaped pond filled with water plants and a dozen large white, orange, and black koi. A tasteful teak bridge spanned the width of the pond and led to a small secluded porch swing on the opposite side of the pond that couldn't be reached without crossing the bridge (or walking across the water).

The house itself was rather box-like in appearance and painted a faded yellow that contrasted nicely against the explosion of bright colors from the plants and flowers. There was a large porch that spanned the entire length of the house where even more potted plants were growing; some of them hung from the awning over the porch and others seated on iron pedestals so that they sat up off the ground. Each of the windows had a set of whitewashed shutters and a window planter filled with herbs or other small plants. And the roof was made from red ceramic shingles that had been bleached orange in places from the sunlight.

All in all, it looked like the house had been grown in the middle of the garden and the towering trees that bracketed the property on three of its four sides gave him the impression that the garden and the house were tucked away in the middle of a forest. Kojimaru immediately liked the place despite the fact that the concept of having a home was rather sketchy in his mind; his memories mostly filled with half remembered pain and darkness. Glancing up at his guardian, Kojimaru stated, "I like it. It feels safe and warm. Like the forest."

"I am glad to hear that, Kojimaru-kun. Come, let us go inside and get you cleaned up; you are still wearing half of the forest. Afterwards, I will show you where you will sleep and keep your things before we go purchase you a few changes of clothes. I will also need to buy groceries for the coming week."

Immediately following that statement, Kosuke bit his thumb to draw blood which he then smeared across the center of the gate that was set into the center of the white picket fence that surrounded the property. Kojimaru watched avidly as a complex array of symbols burst into being and spread out rapidly before they disappeared in a burst of smoke as Kosuke barked a crisp, "Kai."

"What was that?"

"That was the barrier seal that protects the property when I am not home."

"What does it do?"

"It zaps those who try to enter the property without my permission and if they try again, it paralyzes them so that they can not move. If they manage to break that barrier, there is one just inside of the house that will put them to sleep as soon as they enter the house."

"Will it hurt me?"

"No, I turned that barrier off just now so that you could pass through it without harm. And, if you ever do try to force your way into or out of the barrier, it will only sting a bit the first time while your next attempt would see it freezing all of your muscles so you would be stuck until the counter seal is applied but it will not actually cause you, or anyone else, permanent harm. I will key you into the inner house seals so that you can move between the house and the yard freely later tonight. I will not key you into the property seals until you are older though; since I do not wish for you to wander out of the yard alone when you are still too young to protect yourself. So long as you do not try to sneak out of the yard, you will not have to worry about the barriers in any case."

"Okay."

Once he had finished that short explanation, Kosuke led Kojimaru across the yard and up the small set of stairs leading to the front door where he spread more blood on the center of the door and on the door handle to unlock the door. After that, he spread yet more blood on the doorjamb in order to release the inner barrier. The man then kicked off his shoes, swept Kojimaru up into his arms once more, and helped him remove his shoes before he moved further into the house and closed the door behind him. The three year old was then carried through the house to the bathing room where he was instructed to strip out of his dirty clothes while Kosuke ran the hot water to fill up a pair of buckets with rinse water.

The bath and the tour of the house would take just under an hour before Kojimaru found himself back outside once more as Kosuke carried him to the market district. Kojimaru wasn't looking forward to the shopping that Kosuke said needed to be done but Kosuke had flat out refused to leave him home alone when he had complained about going back out into the village. Letting out a soft sigh, Kojimaru rested his head on Kosuke's shoulder and let his eyes trace the outlines of each building they passed in order to avoid seeing the people moving all around them.

* * *

**Translations:** Japanese to English

Arigatou – Thank you  
Hai – yes  
Kai – release  
Kisaragi no Sato – Kisaragi Village; appears in Naruto: Uzumaki Chronicles 2. It is south of Konoha  
Ohayou – good morning

* * *

**11-14-15:** _Minor edits made to chapter to fix spelling/grammar mistakes and removed unnecessary author's notes._


	6. The Academy

**Disclaimer:** _All HP characters are the property of JKR, the WB, and respective publishing companies and all Naruto characters are the property of Masashi Kishimoto. This is nothing more than a simple FanFiction that I have written. I have made no money from this or any of the other stories I have posted on this or other sites._

**Warnings:** _Mild to moderate violence, character death, alternate universe (i.e. kiss canon goodbye), OCC behaviors and personalities, a number of original characters and obscure canon characters to flesh out family trees, random chosen last names to give a number of characters surnames, and who knows what else._

**AN:** _This story is self-beta'd; so there may be occasional grammatical or spelling errors that crop up every now and then and for those I apologize in advance._

* * *

Chapter Six: The Academy

_January 09, 0284 AtD, 7:46 AM  
Konohagakure no Sato, Hi no Kuni_

Kojimaru stared up at the large brown and blue building that Kosuke had stopped in front of with more than a little trepidation. The large crowd of adults and children that were gathered outside of the building only increased his level of discomfort. As did the knowledge that Kosuke would not be staying with him.

"This way, Kojimaru," Kosuke instructed as he gently guided the three and a half year old towards a woman that was dressed in a pale blue dress and a light brown apron with a clipboard in hand.

"Hello and welcome to Konoha's Civilian Academy of Education and Enlightenment," the woman greeted warmly the moment the two of them approached her. "I will need your son's name and age in order to look up his classroom information."

"My godson's name is Kojimaru and he is three and a half," Kosuke corrected even as he answered the question. "He was registered for only a single term."

"Ah, yes; I have him listed in the pre-shinobi group in classroom twenty-three," the woman stated; her voice losing much of its warmth as a frown pulled the corners of her mouth down. "Does he have any food allergies that the staff will need to watch out for?"

"No, but I highly recommend that you not serve him any tea with his noon meals."

"Does he not like tea?" the woman asked in confusion as she glanced down at the now pouting Kojimaru.

"No, he is actually quite fond of tea. The problem is that he tends to draw out the drinking of said tea for hours at a time and he gets quite cranky if you attempt to take it away before he is finished or if you try to rush him. I normally allow him to carry a canteen of tea with him but I was unsure if he would be allowed to bring his canteen with him to class."

"The children are allowed to bring their own lunches and drinks so long as they do not bring any sweets; we've had to break up one too many fights over some favored treat and dealing with sixty plus children on sugar rushes is never fun."

"Ah, I see; thank you for that information."

"You're welcome," the woman replied before she abruptly turned away from Kosuke to greet the next family. "Hello and welcome to Konoha's Civilian Academy of…"

"Come, Kojimaru-kun," Kosuke instructed as he gently led the boy away from the woman.

Kojimaru dutifully followed his guardian up into the building. Once inside of the entrance lobby, Kosuke stopped for a brief moment to study a map that was on the wall before he led Kojimaru down the left hallway to a bright red door with the number twenty-three painted on it in black paint. His guardian then knocked on the door before he opened it and led Kojimaru inside.

The classroom was filled with two long tables that had twenty one chairs arranged around them; one at the head of each table and ten on each side. Taped to the back of roughly two-thirds of the chairs was a piece of paper with a name written on it. In front of those chairs with names on them, there was a workbook, a stack of scratch paper, several pencils, and an eraser. There were a small handful of other children already seated around both tables and all of them curiously glanced in Kojimaru's direction the moment he followed Kosuke through the door.

"Ohayou, I am Terasaki-sensei," a man dressed in brown pants, a blue shirt, and a hitai-ate tied around his left arm greeted from beside the chalkboard at the front of the room. He then gestured towards a man and woman dressed in similar outfits (minus the hitai-ate) that were standing beside the two tables and speaking with the parents of two other students as he introduced, "Over there are Okimoto-sensei and Shirota-sensei; we are the instructors for this term's pre-shinobi group."

"Ohayou, I am Kosuke and this is my godson Kojimaru."

"It is a pleasure to meet you both. Kojimaru-kun, please take your seat; it is located towards the front on the left-hand side of Okimoto-sensei's table," Terasaki replied as he smiled down at Kojimaru. Kojimaru glanced up at his guardian who nodded at him and the child reluctantly released Kosuke's hand and gingerly crossed the room to find the chair with his name on it. Behind him, his teacher addressed his guardian once more, "Is this your godson's first time attending a formal school?"

"Yes."

"Did he receive any instruction at home?"

"Yes, I have been working with him on his reading and writing since I took custody of my godson. I have found him to be a quick learner so long as he is not allowed to grow bored or overloaded with too much information at once."

"Have you taught him any math?"

"I only covered the basics; such as counting up to one hundred, counting by fives and tens, and identifying monetary value of each coin and bill."

"Was that all you taught him?"

"No, I have also been teaching him about the various plants that grow in and around Konoha due to his interest in nature and gardening."

"I see, thank you. Today we will mostly just be testing all of the children to determine where they stand education wise so that we can put together an appropriate study schedule for each of them. When do you plan on enrolling Kojimaru in the Shinobi Academy?"

"His name has already been placed on the list for the summer/fall term."

"So, he will basically only be with us here for one term?"

"Hai."

"That doesn't give us much time to prepare him. How much time will you have to spend helping your godson with his daily homework assignments?"

"As much time as he needs; I have been assigned to wall duty for the duration of his term here and will not be taking any missions out of the village until he is due to start at the Shinobi Academy."

"In that case, I will prepare extra packets of worksheets for him to take home each afternoon once I know where he currently stands academic wise. If at any time I believe that he is falling too far behind, I will forward a recommendation for his enrollment into the Shinobi Academy to be postponed for one or two terms."

"I understand but I do not believe that it will be an issue," Kosuke replied with a nod.

"I hope not but we are required to warn all parents and guardians of the possibility of their child being held back in the event that their child does not perform as expected. And while it is very rare that we are forced to hold a child back, the chances are higher for children in Kojimaru's age group due to their parents or guardians pushing them too hard, too fast, and too soon."

"I understand your concern but I am not pushing Kojimaru towards a fast track program; if he spends the next nine years in the Academy, then he spends the next nine years in the Academy."

"Ah, that is good to know. I get far too many parents desperately trying to raise the next Shiroi Kiba or Kiiroi Senko and it breaks my heart to see children breaking under the pressure before they're even out of diapers. Anyway, did you have any questions?"

"No."

"Then if you'll excuse me, I see another first time parent I must speak with. Please be sure to say goodbye to your godson before you leave."

Kojimaru watched his guardian head in his direction after he finished his conversation with the instructor. He shifted uncomfortably in his seat as he knew that the man would be leaving now.

"Kojimaru, it is time for me to go; I will return this afternoon to pick you up once you are finished for the day," Kosuke stated as he crouched down beside Kojimaru's chair. "Please behave for your instructors and please do not give any of your instructors the silent treatment."

"Wakatta," Kojimaru whispered as he hunched his shoulders.

"Arigatou. Please do try to relax and try to have some fun today. You should also consider making friends with the other students but I realize that that might take some time."

Kojimaru nodded and sighed even as his guardian laughed and ruffled his hair before he rose to his feet and left the classroom; leaving Kojimaru alone amidst the small crowd of strangers. Kojimaru stared at the door for close to ten minutes, hoping that Kosuke would reappear and tell him he'd made a mistake before he took him home. His mood plummeted significantly when that didn't happen. Before he could sink too deeply into his growing depression, Terasaki-sensei called the class to order as the last student took his seat.

"Good morning, class. For those of you who were not paying attention when you first arrived, I am Terasaki-sensei and I am a Chuunin level shinobi. To my left is Okimoto-sensei and to my right is Shirota-sensei; we will be your instructors for the next six months. It is our job to prepare you for the day you enter the Shinobi Academy to learn the skills you will need in order to one day become Shinobi of the Leaf. Today, we will be testing you in order to determine what level you are at and which subjects you will need the most help in."

"In front of you, you will find a test booklet; please use one of the pencils provided to write your name on the front of the test booklet. Has everyone done that? Good. Once I tell you to begin, please answer as many questions as you can. If you come across a question you can't answer, skip it and continue with the test. Once you have answered as many questions as you can, please set your pencil down, close your booklet, and raise your hand so that we can collect your test. Please do not talk during the test and please keep your eyes on your own test."

"Are there any questions? No…? Then you may open your test booklets and begin."

Kojimaru frowned as he opened his test booklet; the three and a half year old uncertain about the actual concept of taking a test. He was relieved the moment he discovered that the questions in the booklet were actually very easy. The first section of the test were on recognizing hiragana, katakana, and kanji characters and required him to label each character printed with their romaji equivalent. Recognizing the various symbols of the three alphabets (four if one counted romaji) was fairly easy for Kojimaru since that was something that Kosuke had worked with him on every night for over two weeks now. He may not have remembered all of the symbols but he did remember most of them.

Half of the second section required him to match the words in the word list at the top of the page with the correct definition of the word. The other half of that section asked him to write out a sentence using each word to prove that he understood the word's meaning. The third section was filled with very short stories that he had to read through before he answered a handful of questions about each story. Kojimaru muddled through both of those sections as best he could since they contained a handful of words that he didn't know.

After those three sections, there was a section on the calendar that required him to fill in the names of the months, the days of the week, and the correct number of days for each month. The section after the calendar was on numbers, counting, and simple math. He didn't have any trouble with identifying the numbers or any of the counting questions but he didn't know how to add, subtract, multiply, or divide and so left the second half of that section blank. He then had a section on money that asked him to label different bills and coins with their proper value.

The eighth section was on Konoha's history and most of the questions were left blank since Kojimaru didn't know that much about the village other than what Kosuke had told him. The last section was filled with a mishmash of different questions that dealt with social development; questions about well known fairytales and fables, about how he would act in certain situations, about common sayings and idioms, and about various street terms and slang. It was, by far, the most confusing section of the test for Kojimaru and he didn't even answer a third of the questions because most of them had made his head hurt when he tried to figure them out.

The moment he reached (and ignored) the final question, Kojimaru closed the test booklet, set his pencil down, and raised his hand as he been instructed. Okimoto-sensei rose from her seat and walked around the table to his chair before she quietly told him that he could put his arm down as she picked up his test booklet. The woman then handed him a small box of crayons and told him he could spend the rest of the testing period quietly drawing while they waited for the rest of the class to finish.

Kojimaru stared at the box of crayons in complete and utter confusion. He'd never seen or heard of crayons before and he wasn't quite certain what the instructor had meant when she told him to draw. Kosuke had taught him how to write but he'd never taught him anything about drawing. Bewildered blues eyes looked up from the box in search of answers but all three of the instructors were busy watching those students that were still taking their tests. Kojimaru then let his eyes search out the other children that had finished and noted some of the ones about his age were writing on their piles of unused scratch paper using similar boxes of crayons that had been given out.

He had no idea what they were scribbling down using the strangely colored sticks but they appeared to at least be having fun while they were doing it. Not wishing to get in trouble, Kojimaru carefully opened the box he'd been given and peeked inside to stare at the collection of colored sticks it held. His eyes unfailingly were drawn to the two green crayons; one dark like his eyes used to be and the other a lighter shade of green that inspired fear for a reason he could no longer remember. He pulled out the dark green crayon and discarded the box as he pulled one of the pieces of blank scratch paper closer to him.

Uncertainty filled him at that point as he flicked his eyes between the green crayon in his hand and the blank paper sitting in front of him. After another minute, Kojimaru tentatively pressed the crayon to the paper and drew downwards as if he was going to write his name. He relaxed as he noticed the stick leaving a mark on the paper the same way that the pencils did. The three and a half year old then tilted his head to one side and began dragging the crayon over more of the paper; absently forming a series of spirals, curly-cues, and curves that were all connected; like a vine twisting and curving back and forth across the paper.

Kojimaru would fill up three pieces of paper with the twisting vine-like lines before the class was called to attention once the last person had finished their test. The entire class was then asked to line up beside the door so that they could be led outside to play on the playground equipment while their tests were being graded. Going outside was something that Kojimaru felt far more comfortable with and he was one of the first children to line up as requested; his little legs and slender build allowing him to slip in between the older children that were in the class.

Once outside, Kojimaru spent the next hour diligently exploring every single inch of the enclosed playground that sat behind the school while he purposefully ignored the other children and the playground equipment. He was just thinking about climbing up one of the few trees in the yard when his sensei declared that recess was over and that it was time to return to the classroom. He reluctantly lined up with the other children and the group was soon led back into the class room where they discovered that the classroom had been completely rearranged while they were outside.

There were now three tables in the room; all of them lined up in a single column with one end butted up against the north wall. The smaller tables also had little cubby holes evenly spaced down the length; five on each side. The labeled chairs from earlier had each been placed in front of a cubby hole and Kojimaru could just make out a pile of paper, several pencils, an eraser, and a box of crayons inside of the closest cubby. Sitting on top of the table, directly over the cubbies, were the test booklets from earlier.

"Welcome back, class," Terasaki-sensei called out as the last child entered the room. "As you can see; we've rearranged our classroom now that we know where each of you fall academically. Please take a moment to locate your new seat and sit down."

Kojimaru followed the other children his age to the nearest table. Most of the younger students quickly found their names and took their seats while Kojimaru was a little lost; his name not on any of the chairs near the other three and four year olds. Feeling rather self conscious as the rest of the children soon found their assigned seats; Kojimaru crept around the tables looking for his name before he found it at the very last table. By that time, Kojimaru was the last child still standing and he felt his face heat up with embarrassment as all eyes turned to watch him take his seat. He felt even more uncomfortable when he finally sat down and discovered that he was the only 'little' kid that was seated at the table.

"Now that every one has been seated, we will start our first lesson…"

"Why do we have one of the babies sitting with us?" an eight year old sitting two seats to the left of Kojimaru loudly demanded as he leaned around the girl seated in between them to glare at the three and a half year old.

"Because that 'baby' as you so put it, scored higher than you did on the reading comprehension portion of the test. Your seats were assigned based upon your test scores with those needing the most help seated towards the front of the room while those with the higher scores were seated in the back. I'd advise you to get used to being in a classroom where one or more of your fellow students are either years younger or years older than you; the Shinobi Academy teaches children of all ages all at the same time and there is no clear separation of age groups as the students are separated by skill and ability instead."

"That said, in the future, I will not tolerate you interrupting me while I speak. If you have something you need to ask or that you wish to share with the class, then you will need to raise your hand and wait until I call on you. Do I make myself clear?"

"H…hai, sensei."

"Good, as I was saying, our first lesson will be on the life of the Shodai Hokage; Senju Hashirama…"

The instructor's lecture on the history of the Shodai Hokage would last for approximately an hour before the children were sent back outside for an hour of calisthenics. Immediately following the physical exercise, the children were led to the cafeteria where they were served lunch. Upon returning to the classroom after lunch, they were given reading and writing lessons; focusing on kanji, since that was apparently the alphabet that most of the children had had some trouble with on the tests.

At the end of the afternoon lesson, Kojimaru was more than ready to go home. He didn't really care for any of the other children as the younger ones avoided him because he had been singled out while the older ones ignored him because he was just a 'baby' in their eyes. He was also more than a little grumpy because he hadn't had any tea all day. His mood would do a complete one eighty when Kosuke produced a bamboo canteen filled to the brim with freshly brewed rosehip and honey tea when he arrived to collect him. The three and a half year old didn't even care when Kosuke spent a good twenty minutes in a conference with Terasaki-sensei regarding his test scores and future lessons before taking him home.

Over the course of the next six months, Kojimaru's days would follow a similar pattern Monday through Saturday. Each morning, he'd be delivered to the school just before eight. He'd then spend half of the morning in lessons and the other half outside playing or training before he ate lunch. After the meal, he'd spend another hour and a half in lessons before Kosuke arrived with a canteen of tea in hand to take him home.

As soon as he arrived home in the afternoons, Kojimaru would spend another two hours completing the worksheets that Terasaki-sensei sent home with him each day with a short break after each half an hour so that he didn't get bored. Once he had finished his daily assignments, Kosuke would send him to wash his hands and face so that he could help make supper where his guardian continued his cooking and plant identification lessons (the latter often taking place outside in the garden). After the evening meal, Kojimaru would then take a bath and get ready for bed before he spent an hour going over the day's homework and practicing his reading and writing with Kosuke.

On Sundays, Kosuke would take Kojimaru to one of the various forests scattered throughout Konoha and the two of them would spend the day gathering an assortment of seeds, bulbs, and cuttings from those plants that Kosuke wished to add to his garden. Those were also the days when Kosuke taught him more about the plants they were collecting and about basic gardening. Kosuke had even built a small planter that he gave to Kojimaru so that the three year old could start a small garden of his own. Kojimaru would fill his planter with berries and herbs that could be used to add flavor to his tea; such as strawberries, raspberries, mint, ginger, and a single dwarf rose bush (for the rosehips).

During those six months, Kojimaru's time with Orochimaru was buried in the back of his mind as he quickly got caught up in just being a child. He laughed and played every chance he got and even got into mischief on the rare occasions when he grew bored. The only time that his childish demeanor disappeared was during lessons when he focused on his instructors (or guardian) with an unnatural intensity for a child his age; his attention unwavering so long as the topic of the lessons wasn't boring him (something that only occurred when he wasn't learning something new).

It was also very clear to the adults in his life that Kojimaru was very smart for his age; the three and a half year old learning at a rate that was far faster than the other children his age. He absorbed the knowledge that was presented to the class like a sponge soaks up water. He didn't have a photographic memory but he did have excellent memory retention and with his guardian's support and encouragement, he made no efforts to hide his intelligence. At the same time, he didn't flaunt it in front of the other children or make fun of those that had a harder time learning the material.

And while he didn't make any friends during his time at the Civilian's Academy, he did eventually learn to interact and play games with the other children during recess or in between lessons.

Over the course of the term, Kojimaru also grew closer to his guardian. By the end of term exams and ceremonies, the soon to be four year old had taken to calling the man Kosuke-oji and treated him as cross between an uncle and a father. It was a development that Kosuke both allowed and encouraged. The man had also tried to curb Kojimaru's excessive tea savoring habits but in the end gave it up as a lost cause and instead started teaching him the intricacies of the different Tea Ceremonies and how to brew more than twenty different types and flavors of tea. Kojimaru loved those lessons just as much as he loved the ones on gardening and cooking.

Throughout those six months, Kojimaru was observed by a masked shinobi who reported directly to Kasai; the ANBU Commander keeping a discreet eye on both survivors in order to gauge how well they were adjusting to their new lives and to make certain any potential threats were identified and eliminated before they could reach either child.

* * *

_June 22, 0284 AtD, 2:01 PM  
Konohagakure no Sato, Hi no Kuni_

Kojimaru tucked the extra workbooks and worksheets that Terasaki-sensei had passed to him (for him to work on during the three weeks of vacation he had now that term was over) into his satchel before he waved to his three instructors and slipped out of Classroom Twenty-Three for the last time. The soon to be four year old then began skipping through the hall as he made his way towards the entrance lobby to wait for Kosuke-oji to collect him. Part of him was excited about having three weeks without any lessons while the rest of him was wondering what he'd be doing if he wasn't in class since he knew Kosuke had to work.

In no time at all, Kojimaru reached the lobby and saw Kosuke waiting for him just outside of the academy. Kojimaru hurried through the doors, eager to see if godfather had gotten the time off he'd requested so that the two of them could go camping outside of the village for the weekend. The artificial redhead skidded to a stop just before he reached his godfather when he noticed a vaguely familiar teen with a spiky ponytail speaking with him. As he hovered just a few steps away from the pair, Kojimaru couldn't help but overhear their conversation; his eyes locked on the stranger's back as he tried to recall where he'd seen him before.

"…to pack; what time did you want me to meet you?" the stranger lazily inquired as he shoved his hands into his pocket.

"Three-thirty; that will give me plenty of time to help Kojimaru pack to insure that he has everything he might need while we are out of the village."

"How long do you anticipate it taking to collect the requested items?"

"No more than a week; so long as we don't run into any problems."

"Wakatta," the stranger replied before he jerked his thumb in Kojimaru's direction. "In the mean time, do you think you can introduce me to the adorable little tyke currently burning a hole in my back?"

Kojimaru started at being caught staring; a dark flush staining his neck and cheeks red as both his godfather and the teen turned to look in his direction. His blush darkened the moment he recognized the teen's face because this wasn't the first time that the teen had caught him staring; the first time had been that first day in the village when he'd been waiting with his godfather outside of the Hokage's office. Kosuke then smiled and gestured for him to join them.

"Shikaku, allow me to introduce you to my godson, Kojimaru. Kojimaru-kun, meet Nara Shikaku. Shikaku will be joining us on our camping trip."

"Hi, Nara-san," Kojimaru greeted shyly with a polite but sloppy bow before he blurted out an excited, "Kosuke-oji, are we really going to camp out in the forest for a whole week instead of just the weekend?"

"Hai, I was asked to take a couple of missions on behalf of the Nara Clan," Kosuke answered with a fond grin as he ruffled Kojimaru's hair.

"Yosh!"

"Someone sounds a little excited," Shikaku chuckled as he too grinned at the child. "What is so special about the forest anyway?"

"The trees never hurt me," Kojimaru solemnly replied as he experienced his first flashback to his time with Orochimaru since he'd been taken in by Kosuke; his eyes darkening in remembered pain as the temperature around him dropped several degrees and the seals disguising the color of his eyes faltered for a second to reveal a flash of deep emerald green before the seals stabilized and hid his original eye color once more.

"You are safe now, my little tiger cub; I will protect you from those who would wish you harm until you are strong enough to protect yourself," Kosuke murmured as he swept Kojimaru up into his arms.

"Sumimasen, I had not intended for my question to cause the child distress; will he be alright?"

"No apologies are necessary, Shikaku; not even I could have predicted how he would react to a simple question. I am sure that Kojimaru will be fine in a few minutes."

And Kojimaru was; the not quite four year old bouncing back from his borderline depression with the ease that only a child or the rare adult can achieve. The three of them would part ways shortly afterwards so that they could all prepare themselves for the trip outside of the village. Kojimaru wriggled and squirmed like an overexcited kitten hunting its first moth as he helped his godfather pack their camping supplies. He then helped Kosuke water the gardens and connect the irrigation system that would water the plants while they were away; the complex system powered and maintained by specialized seals that Uzumaki Mito had designed for Kosuke close to two decades earlier.

Once they were finished and the house had been sealed against intruders, Kosuke seated Kojimaru up on his shoulders and the two of them took to the rooftops as Kosuke headed for the Nara Compound to collect Shikaku. The second they dropped down outside of the large estate, Kojimaru fell in love with the large rambling garden estate that opened up directly into a small forest. His eyes remained glued to the tree line right up until he heard his godfather's voice calling out a greeting as he reached up and lifted Kojimaru down off of his shoulders.

"Konnichiwa, Shikarou-sama; allow me to intro…"

As his feet touched the ground, Kojimaru pulled his eyes away from the forest to look at the man that Kosuke had just greeted. He saw a brief glimpse of a man that looked almost identical to Nara Shikaku, only with gray-streaked hair and a neatly trimmed goatee, before his eyes shifted passed the man to land on a majestic stag that was drinking from a pond just a few feet beyond the man. Kojimaru gasped the moment his eyes landed on the antlered deer as the broken shards of his earliest memories were stirred by the magnificent creature.

Without conscious thought, Kojimaru darted away from his godfather's side and headed straight for the stag. He half heard his godfather calling his name but he ignored his guardian for the first time as he ducked under an arm that tried to grab hold of him in his hurry to reach the stag. His heart felt near to bursting with joy when the stag lifted its head and looked right at him as he rounded the edge of the pond and made a beeline for the deer. Several curses rang out from behind him but the not yet four year old boy ignored the worried voices as he reached the stag's side and promptly threw his arms around the stag's right front leg as he pressed his face against the stag's warm skin.

Kojimaru let out a happy giggle as the stag ducked down to snuffle the back of his neck. He quickly leaned back enough to grin up at the stag as the curious creature sniffed at his hair before nipping lightly at his nose. Kojimaru's little hands released the stag's captured leg so that he could place them on the stag's soft muzzle. The stag snorted at him in response to the touch and Kojimaru laughed out loud before he impulsively planted a kiss on the stag's muzzle. The stag licked his face in return and he let out a cry of disgust as he jumped back and tried to wipe the deer spit from his face.

His cry soon turned to a yelp of shock as he lost his balance and fell backwards into the pond the stag had been drinking from just moments earlier. Kojimaru felt a brief moment of panic when the water closed over his head but it passed when he felt his back hit the muddy floor of the pond almost the moment he slipped under the water. Pushing himself up so that he was seated in the foot deep shallows at the edge of the pond, Kojimaru coughed up the bit of water he swallowed and pouted up at the stag when it loosed a series of low bellows as it laughed at him.

Kojimaru splashed him in retaliation and the stag's bellowing laugh abruptly turned into a bellow of shock as the water hit it in the face. The creature then snorted and shook itself before it leaned down to nose the now smug Kojimaru. The stag then licked the soon to be four year old a second time before it wandered off in search of food. Kojimaru huffed out a petulant whine as he scrubbed the deer spit from his face a second time as he scrambled to his feet and tried to chase after the stag.

His pursuit of the stag was cut short by a pair of strong arms unexpectedly plucking him off of the ground with a muttered mendoukusei before he made it completely out of the pond. Kojimaru whipped his head around to find himself being held at arm's length by a disgruntled Shikaku. The teen let out a resigned sigh as he eyed Kojimaru's wet and muddy clothes before he carried Kojimaru back to Kosuke; the teen still holding him at arm's length to avoid getting his clothes dirty.

"I believe this little bundle of trouble belongs to you, Kosuke-san," Shikaku drawled as he set Kojimaru down on his feet beside his godfather. The teen then turned to address the gray-haired man that look like him, "You're still looking rather pale, ojisan; are you going to be alright or did you need me to fetch a medic before I leave?"

"I'll be fine, Shikaku; the troublesome little gaki only managed to scare about five years off my life with his stunt," the gray-haired man assured the concerned teen while Kojimaru only half listened as he focused his attention on wringing the water out of his wet clothes.

"Sumimasen, Shikarou; I do not know what possessed my godson to behave so recklessly," Kosuke intoned as he bowed to the gray-haired man.

"No apologies are necessary, Kosuke; I'm just thankful that your godson was not harmed."

"Pogs would never hurt me," Kojimaru absently stated as he returned his attention to his dripping clothes; his sub-consciousness supplying him with the childish version of his biological father's nickname (Prongs) without his knowledge.

"Who or what is a pogusu?" Shikaku inquired curiously, the teen stumbling slightly over the unfamiliar word.

"Pogs is the stag; it's his name."

"Oh? Is it now? Why do you believe that that is the stag's name? And what makes you so sure that the stag would not hurt you?" Shikarou asked as he blinked down at the child.

Kojimaru frowned in response to the questions as the fragmented memories of his first life swirled through his mind without any rhyme or reason as he tried to find the answers in them. After a moment, he shoved the scattered shards of those memories back into the depths of his mind when he grew frustrated with their incompleteness before he looked up at the gray haired man and stated, "I just know." He then turned to his godfather and asked, "May I go play with the deer, oji?"

"I'm afraid not, Kojimaru; we were supposed to be on our way out of the village already. As it is, we're going to have to head back home so we can get you out of those wet clothes before we can leave."

"There is no need for you to go all the way home just to change his clothes; he can use our bathroom," Shikaku insisted as he plucked Kojimaru off of the ground a second time. "I will take him inside to change while the two of you gossip a bit more."

Kosuke snorted in amusement as he passed Shikaku the scroll holding Kojimaru's spare clothes. Kojimaru was then instructed to kick off his sandals (so the mud could be wash off of them) before he was carried inside by the teen. Ten minutes and a quick shower later, he was clean and dry once more. Shikaku then carried him back outside, pausing only long enough to introduce Kojimaru to Nara Wakana (Shikaku's mother). Kojimaru and the supply scroll would then be passed to Kosuke before the three of them left the Nara Compound and made their way to the main gate where they took a moment to sign the gate register to log their reason for leaving the village before they disappeared into the trees.

The next five days were pure heaven for Kojimaru as he felt the ancient forest welcome him home. When he wasn't helping Kosuke and Shikaku find and collect those plants, seeds, and roots that the Nara needed to replenish their stock, he was exploring their various campsites, tracking an assortment of wildlife, swimming through leaves and puddles, or climbing up every likely looking tree. Both his godfather and the teen kept a close watch on the boisterous child while he played; the two shinobi constantly monitoring their surroundings for potential threats (both natural and manmade) that could harm the child.

It was towards the end of their week long trip that both man and teen witnessed Kojimaru using all three of his Kekkei Genkai (his internal healing ability being counted as one of three) for the first time since the night Kasai had triggered the boy's implanted bloodlines by manipulating the child's emotions.

At the time, Kojimaru had been climbing through the branches of an old knarled oak tree a good dozen yards from his guardian when he suddenly came face to face with an overly territorial wild cat that had been sleeping in the tree. The bad-tempered cat had attacked before either shinobi could reach child's side; neither one of them had noticed the sleeping cat in the shadows before Kojimaru had accidentally disturbed it from its nap. The large cat (which was easily twice the size of child) raked Kojimaru across the face and arm he'd instinctively raised in an attempt to protect himself.

Kojimaru had cried out sharply (more in surprise than in true pain thanks to his unnaturally high pain tolerance) as the cat's razor sharp claws sliced through his skin. He had instinctively thrown himself backwards to escape the cat's second paw swipe and ended up tumbling out of the tree. As the furious cat lunged after him, Kojimaru's Hyouton reacted to the threat; a dozen lances of hardened ice spearing the wild cat and killing it instantly. At the same time, his Mokuton gave life to oak tree he had been climbing and the newly animated branches gently plucked the falling child out of the air and cradled him close to the trunk.

Both Kosuke and Shikaku had stood gaping at the tree in shock for nearly two full minutes before the sound of Kojimaru's soft sobs had snapped his godfather out of his stupor. By the time he'd fetched Kojimaru from the tree's embrace, the gashes from the cat's claws had been healed without a trace bar the slight pinkish hue of freshly healed flesh and spilled blood staining his skin and clothes. Shikaku would silently deal with the remains of the wild cat while Kosuke tended to Kojimaru; the teen preserving the carcass and ice lances in a storage scroll for later study.

Shikaku, of course, immediately knew exactly who Kojimaru was after witnessing the child using both the Hyouton and what appeared to be a facet of the Mokuton; he had been part of the research team that had investigated Orochimaru's terrible experiments. He had also been one of the few that had suspected that the deaths of the two children had been staged. Kosuke had half feared that the future Nara Clan Head would interrogate him about Kojimaru's abilities but the only thing Shikaku would ask him was how he had ended up with custody of Kojimaru.

The teen had also been quick to assure Kosuke that he would not tell anyone about Kojimaru's true identity or the child's abilities. The young Jounin had even given the older man an overview of the research team's findings (to better help the man deal with any problems that might crop up with his ward). The last thing he provided Kosuke, was a list of those individuals who would know exactly who Kojimaru was if they ever saw him use his implanted Kekkei Genkai in order to reduce the chances of the child accidentally revealing himself to anyone else.

Kojimaru would remain rather subdued during the final two days of the camping trip and while he still played around, he didn't venture very far from his godfather during that time and his laughter no longer echoed through the forest.

* * *

_July 16, 0284 AtD, 7:15 AM  
Konohagakure no Sato, Hi no Kuni_

"Do you have your bento and canteen?" Kosuke inquired as he passed his soon to be four year old ward the satchel he'd packed with a couple of changes of clothes for the child.

"Hai."

"Good. You will remember to wait at the academy for Shikaku to pick you up after your lessons are over?"

"Hai," Kojimaru repeated in an exasperated tone that made him sound far older than his not quite four years.

"I just wanted to be certain," Kosuke dryly pointed out; a trace of amusement coloring his tone in response to the boy's teenager-like behavior and attitude. "I want you to promise me that you will behave for Shikaku while I am out of the village."

"I promise not to cause any trouble for the Nara or the deer, oji."

"Good. I expect you to keep up with your studies and work on your chakra control while I am gone."

"I will, oji."

"Come on then, let's get you to the academy before we miss the opening ceremony."

"Do you know when you will be back, Kosuke-oji?" Kojimaru asked as the two of them exited the house.

"A week, two at most, and that is only if we run into any trouble on the way."

"Oh, okay."

"Chin up, Kojimaru-kun; I will be back before you know it."

"Hai, oji."

Kosuke heaved a mental sigh over the dejected air that the not-quite four year old had wrapped around him. This would be the first time the two of them would be apart for more than a few hours. And while he had never expected to have any children after his wife had died close to a decade earlier, protecting and raising Kojimaru had become one of the most rewarding assignments he'd ever been given. He'd even long since stopped thinking of the boy as part of a mission; which was how Kasai had originally manipulated him into taking custody of the small child. (He couldn't rightly refuse such a delicate mission when the Hokage and the ANBU Commander trusted him with something so important – even if Kasai had implied he could at the time).

Aside from a few small hiccups over the past seven and a half months (including the wild cat incident on their camping trip at the end of the previous month), watching over the child and training him had been both easy and a joy.

There were times when it had been difficult to remember that the child had actually been part of Orochimaru's horrific bloodline experiments. The boy had some how retained a measure of innocence and a sense of wonder that made it easy to forget that he had endured a form of torture and abuse at the hands of the traitor. And then in the next instant the child would say or do something that would slam the truth right back in his face; such as when Kojimaru had been attacked by the wild cat.

Kosuke had known that Kojimaru carried three Kekkei Genkai; Kasai had briefed him shortly after he'd first asked him to take custody of the child. He just hadn't expected to see the proof of all three bloodlines in one fell swoop or in such a violent manner. Once he'd gotten over the shock of seeing the child use the Hyouton and an unfamiliar facet of the Mokuton in self defense and desperation, Kosuke had felt more than a little ashamed at having failed to protect the child from the wild cat. The poor child had had nightmares for a couple of nights after that; not because he'd been attacked (as he had originally believed) but because he'd killed the cat.

If not for the child's innate healing ability, then he'd have borne the terrible scars of that wretched encounter for the rest of his life. To his surprise, Kojimaru hadn't blamed him in the least. In fact, the child had actually apologized to him for not being more careful. And then the child had further surprised him when he'd bounced right back to his usual cheerful self after spending a couple of nights at home in his bed. Kojimaru had even asked when they'd be going camping again; something Kosuke had not expected after the child had been so subdued during the final two days they'd spent outside of the village.

A soft snort escaped Kosuke as he glanced down at the child trustingly clinging to his hand and thought, '_These past seven and a half months have taught me that children are far more resilient than we adults ever give them credit for. The fact that my ward can find anything at all to smile about after the horrors he has experienced in his short life are proof of that._'

Kosuke set aside his reflections on his ward for the moment when he caught sight of the Shinobi Academy up ahead. He chuckled softly when Kojimaru's feet began dragging the moment he too noticed the Academy building coming into sight. Sweeping his godson (and the boy was his godson now, even if he hadn't been when he first took custody of him at the end of December) up into his arms, Kosuke carried the child the rest of the way.

Half an hour later, after the start of term ceremonies, Kosuke delivered Kojimaru to his assigned Chuunin Instructor and bid him good bye. Kosuke stayed just long enough to watch his godson trudge through the Academy's doors along with the rest of the children in his class group before he hurried towards the main gates to meet up with the two Jounin that he would be working with for the duration of this next mission.

* * *

**Translations:** Japanese to English

Hai – yes  
Kiiroi Senko – Yellow Flash  
Konnichiwa – hello, good afternoon  
Mendoukusei – how troublesome, what a drag, or this sucks  
Ojisan/jisan/oji – uncle  
Shiroi Kiba – White Fang  
Wakana – Japanese girl's name meaning harmonious music

**Notes: **

Student dynamics – no, Kojimaru isn't a child genius; he just had a small mental boost due to Orochimaru's experiments and he had some intense one on one lessons with Kosuke during the two and a half weeks they were together before Kojimaru started at the Civilian Academy. That also doesn't mean that the other children in the class are all stupid; they aren't. The way I see it, those children in the pre-shinobi class come from all different walks of life and they are enrolled in school at different ages for different reasons. Some come from poor families, some from rich families, a few from the smaller clans, and most from civilian families.

All of them will have had a different level of homeschooling, if they received any schooling at all. The one thing they all have in common (aside from transferring to the Shinobi Academy at some point) is the fact that this is their first (or maybe second in a few cases) experience with a school type environment; meaning that they are all on equal footing. So, knowing that, it is not unreasonable that Kojimaru knew the answers to some questions that the older children (who took the exact same test as him) did not.

It is also being a partial case of nurture versus nature as Kojimaru is being encouraged to reach his full potential whereas canon Harry was discouraged from showing his full potential during his early years. I never saw canon Harry as lacking in intelligence, he just rarely ever showed his true self because of the way he was raised, the way his friends acted, and the expectations of those around him. Or at least, that is how I see it when I look back over the entire HP series.

* * *

**11-14-15:** _Minor edits made to chapter to fix spelling/grammar mistakes and removed unnecessary author's notes._


	7. The Pact

**Disclaimer:** _All HP characters are the property of JKR, the WB, and respective publishing companies and all Naruto characters are the property of Masashi Kishimoto. This is nothing more than a simple FanFiction that I have written. I have made no money from this or any of the other stories I have posted on this or other sites._

**Warnings:** _Mild to moderate violence, character death, alternate universe (i.e. kiss canon goodbye), OCC behaviors and personalities, a number of original characters and obscure canon characters to flesh out family trees, random chosen last names to give a number of characters surnames, and who knows what else._

**AN:** _This story is self-beta'd; so there may be occasional grammatical or spelling errors that crop up every now and then and for those I apologize in advance._

* * *

Chapter Seven: The Pact

_July 21, 0284 AtD, 12:15 PM  
Konohagakure no Sato, Hi no Kuni_

Kojimaru sighed and took another measured sip of tea from his canteen as he sat curled up in a nest of branches in an old acacia tree that grew on the Academy grounds. Unseen by those on the ground, a thin offshoot from one of the branches that made up the unnatural nest of living branches was gently petting the artificial redhead's back; Kojimaru's implanted Mokuton allowing him to give any tree he approached a degree of near sentience and mobility. It was an ability that had manifested the day he'd been attacked by the wild cat and he still could not control the ability when near any living plant but most especially when he was near any tree or in direct contact with a tree.

He had a similar but completely different problem with his Hyouton when it came to water and air; his Hyouton constantly dropped the temperature around him whenever he became uncomfortably warm. It didn't help that his body temperature had permanently dropped to around ninety-degrees Fahrenheit after that fateful encounter with the wild cat and he would quickly overheat the moment that his temperature rose above ninety-two degrees Fahrenheit. In the event that his temperature exceeded ninety-four degrees Fahrenheit, he would display all of the symptoms of any other child suffering from a severe fever.

The soon-to-be four year old gave out another weary sigh as he absently petted a newly unfurled leaf on a branch that had just slithered up onto his leg. It had been six days since his godfather had left the village on a mission and while he didn't mind staying with Shikaku and his mother or spending time with the deer each afternoon, he missed Kosuke and their nightly cooking lessons. It didn't help that the Nara Clan as a whole tended to be rather lazy and uninterested in extra lessons, extra training, or any other movement that they deemed was unnecessary (such as playing tag with the deer or climbing trees).

Kojimaru was drawn out of his brooding by the sound of someone hailing him from the foot of the tree that he was hiding in. Curious as to who was looking for him, Kojimaru shifted up onto his knees and leaned over the side of the nest the tree had grown for him the first time he had climbed up into its branches. His eyes soon landed on a boy about his age with dirty-blond hair and light brown eyes waving up at him from the base of the tree. Kojimaru recognized the kid from his class; though he had never sat near him during their lessons or even talked to the boy.

"Can I come up?"

Kojimaru bit his lip as he sat back and glanced about his little nest; he'd be in trouble if someone saw the nest because he wasn't supposed to let anyone see what he can make the trees (or the ice) do. Glancing back down at the other boy, he shook his head no and hesitantly replied, "There isn't enough room."

"Oh. Will you come down here instead then?"

Letting out yet another sigh, this time over having his tea-time interrupted, Kojimaru grabbed his things (in case he didn't have time to fetch them before the bell signaled it was time to return to class) and reluctantly climbed down to see what the boy wanted.

"What did you want?" Kojimaru asked a bit nervously once he reached the ground before he cast a worried glance up at the tree to make certain that none of the branches had moved to follow him like they usually did.

"Do you remember me?" the boy asked as he glanced around at the other children that were either playing around or eating their lunches in small groups; as if worried someone might hear him.

"Yeah, you're in my class. You always sit at the back of the room."

"I know that… but do you remember me?"

"No, should I?"

The boy turned to look Kojimaru right in the eye and bluntly replied, "I remember you; you're subject one-thirty-eight."

Kojimaru couldn't help but flinch in response to hearing that horrible number once more. He began hyperventilating as he backed away from the other boy; his eyes widening in fright as he began to fear that Orochimaru and the others had found him once again. He let out a soft whimper as he recalled that Kosuke wasn't here and wouldn't be able to protect him from Orochimaru like he had promised that he would. He would have bolted at that point if not for the other boy reaching out to grab hold of his wrist.

"Don't be scared," the boy whispered urgently as he eyed Kojimaru with concern. "I won't hurt you. I'm subject one-eighty-one."

Kojimaru started in surprise before he frowned and glanced around the yard at the other children much as the other boy had just a minute ago. He then broke free of the other boy's grasp and latched onto his wrist instead as he began climbing back up the tree while dragging the other boy along behind him.

Once they were inside of the small nest, Kojimaru let the other boy go and hissed out a harsh, "Don't you know we're not supposed to talk about that?"

"Do you remember me now?" the boy formerly known as subject one-eighty-one demanded instead of acknowledging Kojimaru's question.

"Sort of; you look different. I look different too. How did you know it was me?"

"I didn't know it was you at first. Not until I saw the way you drink your tea. Did the masked man find you a home and a family too? Did they give you a proper name? My new family named me Tenzou."

"Ojisan named me Kojimaru."

"You have a new uncle too?"

"Not really. Kosuke-oji tells everyone I'm his godson but he's sorta like an uncle and he takes care of me. Did they send you to live with a shinobi too?"

"Hai, Kisuke took me home and he tells everyone I'm his nephew. Emiko is really nice too. She's Kisuke's wife and she lets me call her obasan. Do you have a godmother too?"

"No. Kosuke and I live alone. He has pictures of a pretty woman that he talks to all the time when we're home and he doesn't think I'm listening but he said she died a long time ago the one time I asked him about her. How come you didn't go to the Civilian Academy last term?"

"Kisuke-oji didn't think I was ready. Something about giving me time to settle in or something like that. Emiko gave me all kinds of lessons at home instead. I thought you said there wasn't enough room for both of up here?"

"I kinda lied about that. I'm not supposed to let any one see the way that the trees act all funny and come alive when I'm near them or when I'm touching them," Kojimaru sheepishly answered as he gestured to the branch that was currently petting his hair. "Don't the trees act weird around you as well? Can you make ice grow too?"

"No, I can't do anything like that. I did hear Kisuke say something about me being able to make trees grow when I am older, though. I think that would be kind of cool because I like trees. I especially like the way freshly cut wood smells. Do you like the dirt? I do. I'm always getting in trouble for getting dirty because I like to dig and play in the ground."

"Dirt is okay. I prefer to play in the leaves, splash in puddles, and climb trees. I like the wind a lot too. I like the way it tugs my hair when ojisan runs and jumps across the rooftops while he is carrying me."

The two boys fell silent at that point as they both got lost in their thoughts. Kojimaru was just taking another sip from his canteen when Tenzou spoke up once more to ask, "Do you still remember…?"

"Sometimes, but I try not to," Kojimaru replied as he shuddered in response to the question and the memories that the questioned had stirred; the artificial redhead immediately knowing that the other boy was referring to the things that Orochimaru had done to them. "I don't like remembering."

"I don't either. Do you ever wish you could forget?"

"No."

"Why not?" Tenzou asked in surprise as he twisted around to stare at Kojimaru in shock.

"If I forget, then I will not remember how mean adults can be. I don't like the memories but I don't want to forget them. I already forgot most everything from before _he_ found me; I can't even remember my otousan and my okaasan properly anymore and I don't ever want to forget any thing again. I don't like not knowing when I know I'm supposed to know; even if all I can remember is pain and broken fragments."

"You forgot me."

"No, I didn't, not really; you look different now, so I didn't see you when I looked at you. Just like the old man in the hat didn't see me when he looked at me after ojisan brought me home. I don't think we were supposed to remember each other. The masked man moved us apart that night and then he gave us to different people. We're supposed to be secrets, I think. So they can hide us better from _him_."

"Do you think _he_'s looking for us?"

"I don't know. I don't want _him_ to look for us. I want _him_ to forget about us."

"Are you afraid that _he_ will find you?"

"No, ojisan promised me that he'd protect me."

"But you were scared earlier. When I told you I knew who you were."

"I was only scared because Kosuke-oji is not here. He went on a mission. I was also scared because I didn't think any one would recognize me. No one else recognized me and when you said you did, it startled me and I thought _he_ had found me."

"Oh, I'm sorry I frightened you like that. I just wanted to know if you remembered me like I remembered you. Does your godfather go on lots of missions?"

"Not at first. This is the first time he's left me alone since he took me home."

"He left you all alone? Why would he do that? Aren't you scared?"

"No, I'm staying with Shikaku-san and the deer. And I'm not scared. It just feels weird to not have oji near. Do the people you live with go on missions and leave you too?"

"Not really. Kisuke goes on missions sometimes but he mostly just stays in the village. Emiko never goes on missions; she's a civilian. She takes care of me when Kisuke is not home."

"What's it like having an aunt?"

"I don't know. I guess it's not much different than having a mother."

"Oh," Kojimaru murmured in confusion and discomfort as he desperately tried and failed to recall what it was like to have a mother. After a moment, he asked, "What's it like to have a mother?"

"It's nice, I think."

"What does a mother do?"

"Well, they cook all the time and clean the house. They smile and cry lots too. They also give you hugs to make you feel better. Don't you remember anything about your mother?"

"I remember the color red," Kojimaru whispered; his eyes growing unfocused as he turned his mind inwards. "A dark red that was the color of freshly spilled blood and an acid green light. And I know that she's dead." He then refocused on the other boy as he shook off the fragments of his old memories. "I guess ojisan is like my mother too. He cooks and cleans too. He's teaching me how to cook and how to take care of the garden."

"He's teaching you to cook like a girl?"

"No! Boys can cook too! Lots of boys cook in the restaurants. Besides, who would cook for those grown-ups that don't have mothers to take care of them? They can't all eat at restaurants all the time. Ojisan is the best cook of all."

"How do you know? Has any one else ever cooked for you?"

"Hai, Shikaku-san's okaasan makes supper every night. I like what she makes but I like what Kosuke makes better. He uses all kinds of different herbs and spices that he grows in our garden. He can even make asparagus taste good."

"No way! Asparagus is gross."

"Not the way Kosuke cooks it!"

Before Tenzou could argue back again, the bell signaling the end of the lunch period rang and both boys jumped in surprise at the sound before snickering at one another. The two of them then shimmied down out of the tree as fast as they could so they wouldn't get in trouble for being late to their next lesson. They reached the classroom out of breath and still grinning like loons before they both headed to their seats.

"Will you wait for me after our lesson?" Tenzou asked as he paused halfway back to his seat.

"Okay," Kojimaru agreed with a nod as he too briefly stopped moving to glance back at the other boy.

The two boys shared another grin before they hurried to their seats and sat down as their sensei entered the room just as the final bell rang. All through the history lesson on the First Great Shinobi War, Kojimaru fidgeted in his seat and snuck glances towards the back of the room where the other boy sat. He felt kind of weird; all excited and worried at the same time. None of the other children he'd been around made him feel that way. None of the other children he had played with had ever known what it was like to be an experiment either. Not like him. And not like Tenzou.

After their history lesson, the class was sent back outside for their taijutsu lessons. Kojimaru gravitated towards Tenzou this time; instead of hanging back on the fringe of the group like he had during the past five days. The two not quite four year olds then whispered to one another as they practiced the taijutsu stances that their instructor was teaching them. The topics of their hushed conversation included continuing their boys versus girls cooking argument, training they had been given by their respective guardians, their favorite hobbies, and tea. It was the most fun that Kojimaru had had over the course of his first week at the Shinobi Academy and by the time the lesson had ended, Kojimaru had forgotten all about being depressed over Kosuke's continued absence.

The two of them then waited together in the lobby of the Academy for their respective minders to fetch them after their final class of the day. Just before they parted ways, they agreed to sit together during their indoor classes and to eat lunch together in Kojimaru's hidden nest up in the acacia tree on Monday.

Kojimaru's good mood would last for the rest of the weekend and Shikaku would be worn ragged by the extra energy that the almost four year old had generated in his excitement. When Wakana had asked him why he was so wound up at one point; Kojimaru had grinned at Shikaku's mother and proudly proclaimed that he'd made another friend. That had Shikaku asking him who his other friends were (since the Nara heir had easily deduced who his new friend was given who the soon to be four year old had been hanging around with after classes). Kojimaru had happily answered that his first friends were the trees and the deer; the child never noticing the sorrow his answer invoked in both mother and son.

Monday morning couldn't come soon enough for Kojimaru and once Monday did arrive, Kojimaru was up at the crack of dawn and impatient to leave for once. He'd somehow managed to sweet talk Wakana into making him a special batch of cherry blossom wagashi and preparing a small packet of powdered green tea (the type that is used for tea ceremonies) on Sunday evening when she'd made his bento for the next day. Kojimaru had wanted to do something special to mark his new friendship and so decided that he'd host a special tea ceremony for Tenzou.

He'd even managed to drag Shikaku out of bed an hour early that morning; much to the teen's disgruntlement and his mother's amusement. Kojimaru would then drag Shikaku out the door a full half an hour earlier than they usually left for the Academy so that he could have time to set things up for the tea ceremony and so that he could spend more time with Tenzou before their first lesson started. Shikaku complained the entire way to the Academy while Kojimaru ignored him and pulled him along at a near run so that the Nara wouldn't waist any time.

Kojimaru dropped Shikaku's arm the moment they stepped onto the Academy grounds and darted off towards the acacia tree that he'd claimed for himself as he hastily called a quick goodbye over his shoulder to his disgruntled babysitter. He quickly scrambled up the trunk of the tree in the blink of an eye and disappeared into the hidden nest where he spent the next ten minutes making his secret fort a little bigger and coaxing the tree into growing a small table in the very center of the nest. Once that was done, he covered the table with a white handkerchief before he carefully set out the ceremonial tea bowl, packet of powdered tea, a canteen of hot water, a tea whisk, a bamboo ladle, a ceremonial tea bowl, a pair of small plates, and the covered boxes holding his bento and the wagashi.

He then scampered back down the tree trunk and rushed back around to the front of the Academy to look for Tenzou. It didn't take him long to find his new friend and Kojimaru whooped gleefully the moment his eyes fell upon the other boy; startling more than a few teachers and students since he was usually rather quiet. Tenzou's eyes had lit up the moment he saw Kojimaru in turn and they grinned at one another before they darted off to play a game of tag while they waited for class to start. Several of the other children would join them in their game not long after that.

When the bell rang some fifteen minutes later, the two boys were flushed from excitement and giggling as they followed the rest of the class into the room. The moment they stepped inside of the room, Tenzou would drag Kojimaru to the back of the classroom where the two of them claimed a pair of desks side by side in the very last row. The first half of the morning would pass by with agonizing slowness as they spent an hour learning how to find their chakra through meditation and another hour going through chapter two of the Shinobi Handbook.

During the second half of the morning, Kojimaru and Tenzou would huddle together and whisper back and forth as they performed their daily exercises and took turns practicing shurikenjutsu. As soon as their class was released for lunch, both boys ran back to the classroom so that Tenzou could grab his lunch before Kojimaru eagerly hauled Tenzou up into the acacia tree once more. Tenzou was rather surprised at the appearance of the somewhat lopsided table that had been set for tea but he only grinned in excitement when Kojimaru shyly explained what he had planned.

Kojimaru started the tea ceremony by carefully emptying the packet of powdered tea into the ceremonial bowl before pouring in the still hot (but no longer boiling) water from the canteen. He then carefully used the tea whisk to stir the mixture until the last of the powder dissolved. Finally, he opened up the box of wagashi and carefully served them each two pieces of the blossom shaped confections; making it a point to serve Tenzou first.

Once he had finished serving them both, Kojimaru solemnly declared Tenzou his friend as he carefully passed the bowl of tea to him. He watched Tenzou slowly turn the bowl three times and drink half of the tea before he proclaimed Kojimaru his friend in turn as he passed the bowl back to him. Kojimaru beamed at the slightly taller boy as he turned the bowl in his hands three times before he drank the rest of the tea; Kojimaru for once not making an attempt to drag out the drinking of the tea due to the importance of the ceremony in his mind. Silence then filled the hidden fort as the boys ate their wagashi.

After the ceremony was deemed complete, Kojimaru traded the bowl for his bamboo canteen (filled with orange tea this time) while Tenzou removed the lids from their bento boxes. The seriousness of the ceremony was then broken as the individual meals were freely shared while the pair chatted about all of the things that they'd experienced since being separated. They also talked about the things that they wanted to do. By the time they finished the last morsel of their small feast, the two boys were feeling far more comfortable around one another; their friendship fully acknowledged and accepted.

Just before they climbed down out of the tree in order to wash their dishes, the two boys made a solemn vow to never forget each other, to always be friends, to look out for one another, and to keep each other's secrets. The lingering traces of Kojimaru's magic that unknowingly lived on in both boys (little though there was in Tenzou) insured that their pact would hold fast for the rest of their lives.

The two boys were inseparable from that point forward. They studied, trained, played, pranked, and ate together every single chance they got; much to the exasperation of a certain masked ANBU Commander who had split the two of them up for a reason. Their respective guardians encouraged the friendship; neither of their assigned caregivers aware of the fact that the child of the other was another survivor of Orochimaru's experiments. A fact that further drove Torifu up the wall because he couldn't exactly tell either man why he didn't want their wards associating with one another since it would defeat the purpose of splitting them up and hiding their identities.

It didn't help that any attempts to separate the two of them were met with open hostility from both boys. Those that didn't heed their verbal protests over any temporary separations were promptly and publicly pranked; repeatedly and with careful planning for optimum humiliation. Would be bullies that attempted to pick on the pair were given the same treatment. Few bullies were brave enough to suffer through the humiliation more than once or twice before they learned to avoid and ignore the two friends.

Throughout the next two years, Kojimaru and Tenzou would grow by leaps and bounds physically, emotionally, socially, and academically. The time that they spent training together saw the two of them unconsciously adopting skill sets that complimented each other's strengths and covered their weaknesses. That was most especially true when it came to their taijutsu; Tenzou leaning towards becoming a heavy hitting offensive fighter while Kojimaru was a fluid and fast moving defensive fighter that would eventually become near impossible to catch. The same was fairly true of their throwing skills; Kojimaru being able to flood an area with shuriken and kunai in the blink of an eye while Tenzou threw slower with greater accuracy and strength – making their combined attacks far more dangerous.

When it came to the low level ninjutsu that were taught at the Academy, Tenzou picked up each new jutsu fairly easily due to his having good chakra control and only slightly larger than average chakra reserves. Kojimaru, on the other hand, struggled with each jutsu due to his far larger reserves and rather poor chakra control. However, once he did manage to learn a jutsu, Kojimaru could repeatedly use it without worrying about chakra exhaustion because of his chakra reserves were so large.

Their survival skills were well above average for their age and class level due to the countless weekends and vacations spent camping outside of Konoha with Kosuke (Tenzou invited to join them on occasion after the two boys had become friends). Kisuke, in turn, had taught the boys stealth, evasion, escape tactics, and how to hide in plain sight on the nights when Kojimaru spent the night at Tenzou's home. Nara Shikaku, who had somehow ended up as the official babysitter of both boys despite his protests, ended up teaching the pair basic strategy (using games like Go and Shogi), how to read body language, how to deceive someone using body language, and helped them improve their meditation (in order to make them to sit still for a half an hour so he could get a break from their rambunctiousness).

As much as the two boys had in common, most of their chosen hobbies were actually very different. Kojimaru enjoyed cooking, gardening, tea ceremonies, and bird watching while Tenzou preferred carpentry, wood working and carving, and studying architecture. The hobbies that they had in common were camping, pranking, and telling ghost stories – the scarier, the better. They also had a few different likes and dislikes, different fears (as well as a few shared fears), and slightly different dreams for the future.

In addition to his Academy lessons and the extracurricular training sessions, Kosuke spent a considerable amount of time helping Kojimaru learn how to control his implanted Kekkei Genkai. Those training sessions mainly focused on getting Kojimaru to recognize the dropping temperature as an activation of his Hyouton and keeping a tight reign on his chakra when around trees. On top of that, Kosuke was teaching Kojimaru to change the nature of his chakra into each of his individual affinities; wind, water, and earth. The reason for those lessons was to give the child a better understanding of his chakra in order to further improve his control over both elemental Kekkei Genkai.

Changing his chakra to water was fairly easy as all he had to do was draw the moisture from the air to soak a piece of paper (or cloth if he didn't have any paper on hand). It was changing his chakra into wind and earth that gave him trouble because of the way plant matter tended to react to his chakra (leaves or sticks automatically growing into new trees even if they had been completely dried out). So, instead of crumbling a leaf (for earth) or cutting a leaf (for wind), Kojimaru was forced to skip straight to the second level; crumbling rocks and cutting senbon. Tenzou was receiving similar training from Kisuke and, unbeknownst to both of their guardians, the two boys would practice the exercises together and help one another on the sly.

At the end of their second year at the Shinobi Academy, just over a month before their sixth birthdays, the inseparable pair of troublemakers would take and pass the Genin Exam. Their early graduation, while not exactly unexpected and mostly encouraged, was not exactly a welcomed development in the eyes of their guardians. The reason for that was entirely due to the war that had broken out between Konoha and Iwa in October of two hundred eighty-five when the rising tensions between the two villages came to a head in the aftermath of a botched mission that had ultimately resulted in the death of the Tsuchikage's wife and his newborn daughter.

The team that had been assigned that particular mission bore the blame for the war (due to that being the final straw that sparked the current hostilities) but none more so than Hatake Sakumo aka Konoha no Shiroi Kiba. It had been Sakumo's decision to delay the mission in order to save the lives of his injured teammates after their team had been attacked by a high level rogue shinobi from Kirigakure no Sato. By the time he'd gotten the other three shinobi to safety and resumed the mission, the damage had already been done for his delay would ultimately result in the death of the Tsuchikage's wife and daughter.

Sakumo would break in less than two weeks under the disdain and in some cases outright hostility that was directed at him and tragically committed seppuku to atone for his mistakes. Hatake Kakashi, Sakumo's seven year old son, was the one that found his father's still warm body just minutes after he had died. The seven year old Chuunin would be made a ward of the Sarutobi Clan the day after his father's death in order to protect the child from hostile civilians and shinobi that still blamed his father for the war and saw Kakashi as a scapegoat for their anger due to his relation to the dead Sakumo.

Kakashi would be traumatized by the discovery but soon strove to put the stigma of being his father's son behind him by religiously adhering to the shinobi code of conduct. He also began covering half of his face with a cloth mask to hide his resemblance to his deceased father and to hide his emotions. The young Hatake prodigy would fade into near obscurity within a few months as the war quickly began heating up with skirmishes taking place nearly every time a Konoha team left the borders of Hi no Kuni.

As a result of the war, the age and skill requirements for graduation from the Academy had been lowered in order to boost the number of shinobi on the force. The influx of new Genin would then allow the more experienced shinobi to be deployed on those missions with a higher chance of facing off against Iwa shinobi. It also allowed them to build up the size of their force. Unlike peace time graduates, those who graduated after the declaration of war were not tested by their assigned Jounin instructor to discover whether or not they could work together as a team; Konoha couldn't afford to send half trained soldiers back to the academy because of petty differences when the war was escalating quickly.

The newly made teams would also not be overly specialized teams like those that were formed during peace time; where the Hokage arranged the teams based upon clan heritage, test scores, and potential. Instead, the teams were formed by the Academy instructors that had taught the most recent term for the graduates and strictly based upon age first and then by skill in an effort to create generic teams that could be sent on any mission. The teams would then be put through a month's worth of intense training by their Jounin sensei before they began taking high D and low C ranked missions (the low ranked D missions that were nothing more than glorified chores going to the injured and retired shinobi instead of bogging down the more able bodied shinobi on the mindless chores).

As the only two six year olds in the current batch of graduates, Kojimaru and Tenzou were promptly placed on the same team by their Chuunin instructor along with the next youngest boy who'd not yet been assigned a team. That was how the two of them ended up on Team Fourteen with the soon to be nine year old Yamashiro Aoba under a twenty year old Jounin by the name of Shirakumo Hayama.

By the time Kasai learned that both survivors had graduated and that they had been mistakenly placed on the same team, it was too late to do anything about it because ordering them to be separated at that point would draw far too much attention to the pair. The reason he had not learned about their placement sooner was because the ANBU Squad that had been selected to watch over both boys during the first twelve months after they had been released from the hospital had been pulled from their watch duty around the same time that Iwa had declared war on Konoha (their memories of their former charges sealed to protect their identities).

Needless to day, Kasai was more than a little displeased that his plans to once again separate the two children had failed while his attention was focused upon the war.

That didn't stop the man from pulling Hayama into his office without any warning and giving the man very specific instructions about what he was and was not allowed write down in any mission report. Specifically, the Jounin was ordered (under penalty of death) to never make any allusions to either child's Kekkei Genkai. That would make Hayama one of four people that knew the identities and capabilities of both boys; the other three people being Kasai, Tsunade, and Jiraiya. The Hokage was fully aware that both boys were still alive but the Hokage had chosen to exclude himself from the list of individuals that were given that information.

In addition to those four people, there were another four people that knew the truth about Kojimaru's identity. One of those four was Maruboshi Kosuke, who had been told the same day that he'd taken custody of the child. The other three individuals had all stumbled upon the truth on accident. Nara Shikaku had witnessed the reawakening of Kojimaru's abilities and recognized him as one of the two survivors. Akimichi Chouza and Yamanaka Inoichi would both learn the truth when Kojimaru saw Inoichi for the first time after he'd been taken in by Kosuke; the then four year old had yelled at the blond for lying to him about the extra cup of tea that Inoichi had promised him.

There was only one additional person that was fully aware that Tenzou was one of the two survivors that had been found within Orochimaru's underground labs and that was his guardian, Maboroshi Kisuke. The reason why so few people had managed to discover the truth about the second child was mostly due to the fact that his implanted Kekkei Genkai had not yet been activated and because he'd not accidentally ousted himself to anyone over a grudge.

* * *

**Translations:** Japanese to English

Bunshin no Jutsu – Clone technique  
Henge no Jutsu – Transformation technique  
Kawarimi no Jutsu – Substitution technique  
Kinobori no Waza – Tree climbing  
Konoha no Shiroi Kiba – Konoha's White Fang  
Meisai Gakure no Jutsu – Camouflage Concealment Technique  
Seppuku – ritual suicide by disembowelment (originally used by samurai)  
Shurikenjutsu – weapon throwing techniques

**Notes: **

Tea Ceremony – okay, as someone who has never participated in a tea ceremony before, I realize that my version is far less accurate than a true tea ceremony. I did read up on tea ceremonies prior to writing this chapter but a description of what takes place during a ceremony isn't exactly the same as being a part of one. So, any glaring mistakes are accidental and not meant to offend and at the same time intentional since I imagine a four year old child's version of a tea ceremony would be less than perfect in any case. That is also one of the reasons why I sort of skimmed over the ceremonial parts as well.

Kakashi's father – while I know the reason that Sakumo killed himself is canon, the mission that I had him on is not; as that is one that I came up with to account for why an abandoned mission could potentially trigger a war. I figured the loss of his wife and daughter would be one potential scenario and I wanted this war to be personal for Oonoki since it would explain why the old man was so bitter even long after the war ended.

* * *

**11-14-15:** _Minor edits made to chapter to fix spelling/grammar mistakes and removed unnecessary author's notes._


	8. The Team

**Disclaimer:** _All HP characters are the property of JKR, the WB, and respective publishing companies and all Naruto characters are the property of Masashi Kishimoto. This is nothing more than a simple FanFiction that I have written. I have made no money from this or any of the other stories I have posted on this or other sites._

**Warnings:** _Mild to moderate violence, character death, alternate universe (i.e. kiss canon goodbye), OCC behaviors and personalities, a number of original characters and obscure canon characters to flesh out family trees, random chosen last names to give a number of characters surnames, and who knows what else._

**AN:** _This story is self-beta'd; so there may be occasional grammatical or spelling errors that crop up every now and then and for those I apologize in advance._

* * *

Chapter Eight: The Team

_June 23, 0286 AtD, 11:30 AM  
Konohagakure no Sato, Hi no Kuni_

Kojimaru slid into his seat beside Tenzou a split second before the bell rang. The not-quite six year old wriggled in excitement as he glanced at his best friend. Tenzou turned to him at the same time and the two boys shared a grin as they took in the shiny hitai-ate securely tied around each other's forehead. Their attention was drawn back to the front of the classroom a moment later as Midori Kusaha, their instructor for the past term, climbed to his feet and stepped out from behind his desk as he called the classroom to order.

"Alright, everyone quiet down and find a seat! I have few things that I need to say before I announce the team formations and provide each new team with the name of their Jounin sensei. Thank you. First, I would like to congratulate each and every one of you on graduating once again; I know that everyone seated here worked hard over the past four months in order to earn the hitai-ate that you now wear. And while I am proud of you all, I wish many of you had not chosen to take up a hitai-ate when you did."

Kojimaru and Tenzou both tried hard not to squirm in their seats when Kusaha-sensei's eyes lingered on them for a moment before they moved on as he continued his speech, "It is not because I don't think you are capable, it is because I fear that I am sending you to an early grave. I know that being a shinobi seems like a grand adventure to most of you and what you need to understand is that being a shinobi is not a game. There are no winners, only broken survivors. I am not telling you this to scare you; I am telling you this in the hopes that my words of warning will save your life."

"There is a war going on outside of this classroom. I know most of you have seen it in the faces of your parents or heard it from the mouths of strangers that you've passed on the street. There is a difference between hearing about war and living a war though and the moment you walk out of this classroom today, you will become part of the war thanks to those shiny plates of metal strapped to your foreheads. The moment you accepted your hitai-ate, you became a soldier and the enemy will not see your age or inexperience when they face you on the battlefield; all they will see is that you wear the leaf in service to our village."

Kusaha paused as he dropped his gaze to the floor and took a deep breath before he looked back up and began speaking once more, "I am going to assign each of you one last assignment as your Academy instructor. When you leave here today with your Jounin sensei, I want each of you to train hard and listen well to everything that your new sensei will be teaching you. I have no wish to see any of you carried back to Konoha in a black scroll by your teammates because you grew lazy or careless."

Many of the students shivered in response to the blunt reference to the death scrolls that shinobi used to carry home the bodies of the dead and more than a few of the girls in the room looked rather green in the face. Neither Kojimaru nor Tenzou reacted to the reference, however; they had been desensitized to death by Kosuke during their frequent camping trips outside of the village in preparation for the day they earned their hitai-ate. Few of the civilian born and raised Genin in the room (which was close to two-thirds of those present) had gone through such extreme training.

And none of their fellow Genin had been cruelly and painfully experimented on by Orochimaru in the way that they had been; there were things that were far worse than death, after all.

Their Academy instructor wasn't aware of their terrible past though and the man took their non-reaction as an indication that they had not understood his speech or that they were still caught up in the romance that was associated with their chosen profession. Kusaha was one of those who had wished to hold the two soon to be six year olds back the moment he learned that they were attempting the test. Kusaha hadn't been the one to administer the test though and he was too low in the Academy staff hierarchy to protest their passing.

"Does any one have any questions? No? Then I will begin announcing the team formations; please remain silent and stay in your seats until I have finished calling out all of the team assignments. Team One is…"

Kojimaru huddled in on himself as he locked his worried and hopeful eyes on Kusaha. He didn't care who was on his team or who had been assigned as his Jounin sensei so long as he was on a team with Tenzou. He didn't think he could bear it if he was put on a different team than his best (and only) friend (that was human, anyway). The moment he heard Kusaha-sensei call his name, Kojimaru held his breath as he waited to hear who his two teammates were.

"Team Fourteen is Kojimaru, Tenzou, and Yamashiro Aoba; your Jounin sensei will be Shirakumo Hayama. Team Fifteen is…"

Kojimaru released his breath and sagged back in his chair before he began grinning like a loon as Tenzou playfully poked him in the side. Kojimaru glanced sideways at his best friend before he began craning his neck as he searched the rest of the room to find their third teammate. Tenzou poked him a second time and when Kojimaru turned to look at him, Tenzou gestured towards the right with his chin. Kojimaru let his eyes follow the direction his friend had indicated and he soon found himself meeting the gaze of an older boy wearing a pair of brown framed sunglasses.

The boy nodded his head politely and Kojimaru returned the gesture as he recognized him as one of the few older students that had never picked on him or Tenzou; he'd just never bothered to learn the boy's name before or he would have recognized him by name alone. Happy with his team formation (mostly just because Tenzou was on his team), Kojimaru went back to wriggling excitedly in his seat as he waited for his sensei to finish announcing the teams so he could find out what they were supposed to do next. He didn't have to wait long.

"… sensei will be Uchiha Yashiro," Kusaha-sensei finished before lowering the scroll he'd been reading the team formations from. "Is there anyone who did not hear me call their name? No? Then you are dismissed for lunch; make certain that you return to this classroom no later than one fifteen to meet with your Jounin sensei. I highly recommend that you spend your lunch break getting to know your new teammates if you don't already know them. Good luck, Genin."

"I'll see if Yamashiro-senpai wants to join us, Kojimaru-kun," Tenzou insisted as the two young Genin climbed to their feet in unison. "You go get everything ready for the tea ceremony that I know you had planned out to celebrate our team announcements."

"Wakatta," Kojimaru replied as he grabbed their things and headed out the window and down the side of the building to save time.

Three minutes later, he was climbing up his and Tenzou's acacia tree. He took a moment to clean out the handful of leaves that had collected in the nest-fort over the weekend before he quickly set the sturdy table that had replaced the first table he'd grown out of the branches. He was just pulling out the hand carved wooden plates (that he and Tenzou had made at a craft workshop during the break between terms) when Tenzou dropped over the short wall of the hidden fort followed by Aoba.

"Thank you for inviting me to join you," Aoba stated in a somewhat formal tone as he sat down at the table and set his bento on the fort's floor. He then took a moment to glance around the small fort before he added, "This place is much nicer than I expected it to be."

"We are pleased that you were willing to join us for our tea ceremony, Yamashiro-senpai," Kojimaru replied just as formally as he began preparing the tea.

"Call me Aoba," the older boy countered with a grin and just like that the slight tension between the three boys melted.

Kojimaru diligently played the host while Tenzou answered Aoba's questions and asked a few in return. By the time lunch was over, the three of them at least felt comfortable with one another even if they hadn't automatically become the best of friends yet. Upon returning to their classroom for the final time, the newly created Team Fourteen would be one of the first teams collected by their Jounin sensei. The three boys quickly gathered their things and scurried after their sensei as he left the classroom just after he'd called their team number.

The trio was eventually led to Training Ground Thirty-Two and instructed to sit down. As he sat down, Kojimaru took the time to study his new sensei. The man was several inches taller than Kosuke with dark eyes and dark gray hair that he had pulled up in a ponytail on top of his head. He wore the standard shinobi uniform, a green flack jacket, and a sword on his right hip. Cursory inspection complete, Kojimaru returned his eyes to his sensei's face in time to meet the man's gaze for a brief moment.

"My name is Shirakumo Hayama, you may call me Hayama-sensei," Hayama stated once he broke eye contact with Kojimaru. "There are a few rules I need to cover before we do anything else. First rule; when we meet as a team, no matter what we are doing, I expect all three of you to be on your best behavior and to pay attention. You are now shinobi and as such you are representatives of Konoha; meaning that your behavior reflects back on the village and if you screw around, you make our village look bad. That is especially true on missions."

"Second rule; if I tell you to do something, I fully expect you to do it without any whining. If you are unsure of what it is that I am asking to do, you may ask for clarification but I will not tolerate you arguing with me. Any disobedience will be punished and if it becomes a problem, I will have you stripped of your hitai-ate in order to prevent your idiocy from killing me or your remaining teammates. Third and final rule; I expect you to give your all during training and while we are on missions. I won't tolerate any half-assed efforts from you when it comes to improving your skills or doing your job. Any questions?"

"No, Hayama-sensei," all three boys promptly replied in unison.

"Good. What I would like to do now is get to know a little bit about you before I assess your current skill levels. We'll start with the youngest and work our way up in order of age. I want you to tell me your name, one of your hobbies, the skills that you think are your best and worst, and one thing you are interested in learning."

Tenzou let out a sigh, he was just under two weeks younger than Kojimaru and it often irked him because he was taller than the artificial redhead. He then promptly began reciting, "My name is Tenzou. I like to study architecture. I'm best at taijutsu and shurikenjutsu but not that good at genjutsu. I want to learn kenjutsu."

"I'm Kojimaru," Kojimaru began the moment Tenzou finished. "My favorite hobby is camping. I'm very good at all of the survival skills that I learned at the academy and from ojisan. I still need lots of practice on chakra control. And I want to learn kenjutsu too."

"Yamashiro Aoba. I love to read. I am good at genjutsu and shurikenjutsu. I need to work on my taijutsu. And I wish to learn more jutsu."

"Arigatou," Hayama murmured before he gestured for them to stand up. "I want all three of you to warm up and then we are going to run laps long the inside wall of the village. You are to run at a steady jog until your leg muscles burn and you can't catch your breath. Once you reach that point, you are to walk back here to cool down and rest. I need you to push yourself as far as you can without making yourselves sick so that I can get an estimate of your current level of physical stamina."

All three boys cut off a groan in response to the order as they began stretching their leg muscles and doing a dozen or so jumping jacks to loosen the rest of their muscles. Kojimaru and Tenzou then took off at a slow and steady lope in perfect synchronization with Aoba catching up to them a split second later. As they ran through the streets in the direction of the closest stretch of the village's defensive wall, Hayama shadowed them from the rooftops so that he could keep an eye on the trio of Genin without worrying about any of the civilians moving through the streets blocking his view.

Tenzou would be the first one to reach his limit at just over two full circuits around the village. A dozen steps later, Kojimaru also slowed to a stop despite the fact that he knew he could run several more laps due to the way his internal healing ability constantly washed away the muscles strain and fatigue that his body accrued before it could truly affect him. And while Tenzou had gained Kojimaru's internal healing ability thanks to Orochimaru's experiments, Tenzou's ability was a watered down copy with far more limitations to it; which is why he had been the first to reach his limit.

On top of that, Kojimaru's ability had been enhanced by the merging of his chakra and magic, his chakra reserves were more than four times larger than Tenzou's chakra reserves, and his chakra actually replenished itself at twice the rate of normal chakra. In more ways than one, Kojimaru was an anomaly that shouldn't exist in this world and his body didn't quite conform to the rules that governed those that were born in this world. Not that anyone was aware of just what made Kojimaru different since Kojimaru couldn't remember his birth world and the idea that he had come from an alternate dimension never crossed anyone else's mind (not even his own).

So, while Kojimaru could have continued running, he had chosen not to because he was not about to leave his friend behind. He had actually half expected his sensei to bark at him about stopping early but because the Jounin had expected the two younger boys to stop first, the man said nothing about Kojimaru stopping early. After a few minutes to allow Tenzou to catch his breath, the pair began heading back towards the training ground as expected where they would spend a half an hour stretching while the waited for Aoba and their sensei to join them once more.

The moment the other half of their team returned, Hayama-sensei set about testing their taijutsu, shurikenjutsu, chakra control, and evasion skills. He then gave the three of them a short break before he instructed each of them to demonstrate every single jutsu they knew (even if they hadn't mastered the jutsu). That equated to the basic Academy taught jutsu for all three of them plus the Meisai Gakure no Jutsu for Kojimaru and Tenzou; the latter actually surprising the Jounin when he learned that they'd taught themselves that particular jutsu just by watching other shinobi use it.

Hayama was less surprised when he went to teach the three of them the tree climbing exercise (an exercise that would help him get a feel for the size of their chakra reserves) and learned that both Kojimaru and Tenzou already knew how use Kinobori no Waza. The Jounin had simply set the two six year olds to practicing walking up and down a tree to expand their chakra reserves (not that they needed to) and refine their chakra control while he taught Aoba how to climb the tree using his chakra. Kojimaru struggled with the exercise simply because he had to keep the tree from reacting to his chakra as he walked up and down the trunk; something that he still had trouble doing despite the past two years of training.

The three newly minted Genin would be dismissed the moment it became clear that they were reaching their current limits (the man automatically assuming Kojimaru's limits matched Tenzou's once again) with instructions to meet Hayama back at the same training ground at six sharp the next morning for their first day of training.

The next ten weeks would be filled with nothing but intense training for the trio of boys. During the first week, Hayama focused on their taijutsu as he showed them several new katas, taught them how to fight together as a team so that they didn't get in one another's way, and worked to increase their stamina and endurance. At the end of that first week, Hayama-sensei suddenly started looking at Kojimaru and Tenzou differently and switched the focus of their training to ninjutsu. Or rather, he drilled them endlessly on chakra control and chakra building exercises for two weeks straight before he brought out a pack of chakra paper at their next training session in order to test their chakra affinities.

Hayama demonstrated how to use the slips of paper (revealing his wind affinity) before he tested the Genin. Aoba turned out to have a fire affinity (the most common affinity found in Konoha); his paper catching fire in his hand. Tenzou's test revealed both his earth and water affinities with earth being his strongest; his paper crumbling to dust that became slightly damp. Kojimaru had attempted to get out of performing the test but ended up doing it anyway; his paper splitting into multiple sections that all promptly turned to mud before the handful of wet dirt froze into a solid lump.

Aoba had been a little jealous that the two younger boys had both demonstrated multiple affinities until he learned that they would be required to do two and three times the amount of elemental training. It helped that Hayama began passing Aoba training scrolls containing a number of new jutsu to learn including; Meisai Gakure no Jutsu, Katon: Endan, and the Shunshin no Jutsu. Kojimaru and Tenzou in the mean time continued practicing to change the nature of their chakra; only they were now being encouraged to practice openly instead of in secret.

After another week of focusing strictly on chakra control and manipulation, Hayama began adding taijutsu and shurikenjutsu practice to their training schedule. He also had them start running laps each morning and evening in order to increase their endurance and stamina. Shortly after Tenzou's birthday and once Aoba could walk up a tree without needing a running start, Hayama taught all three of them Suimen Hokou no Waza at one of the small ponds scattered throughout the village. The moment each of them could remain on the water's surface for at least five minutes, he moved their taijutsu spars onto the water in order to force them to start using the Suimen Hokou no Waza instinctively.

Once they stopped falling into the water during their spars, their taijutsu practice was moved into a special training field that was filled with scattered fallen logs around the section of the river that cut through the middle of the field where they learned to fight in the trees without the danger of falling to their deaths if they fell off of the logs. It also allowed them to learn how to move through the trees while using their chakra to help them stick when they landed and to enhance their jumps as they hopped from log to log (allowing them to cross larger gaps).

That of course, led to their daily runs moving from the streets of Konoha to the rooftops and trees once they stopped slipping and falling off of the logs every few minutes. Their water spars were also moved from the still ponds to the river where they had to learn how to account for the shifting currents of the water.

The intense training sessions were brutal on the two six year olds but they never complained; they'd been well prepared for the life of a shinobi by their guardians and Academy instructors. They still fell into bed each night exhausted beyond words and cursing their sensei for being a sadist. Aoba felt much the same way but because he was three years older than Kojimaru and Tenzou, his body was better able to cope with the intensive training schedule – though not by much since the two six year olds had their internal healing abilities to give them a slight advantage over other children their age.

At the end of those first ten weeks, Hayama finally picked up a mission for Team Fourteen. The mission he chose was a simple D Rank Mission to babysit a toddler for three hours in order to test his team's teamwork in a controlled environment. To better simulate a proper escort and protect mission, the three Genin were required to take their 'client' to one of the playgrounds scattered throughout Konoha. To add a level of difficulty to the task, they were charged with preventing the toddler from ruining his clothes or throwing a tantrum.

The mission had been an eye opening experience for all three boys; the toddler running all three boys ragged from the moment they'd collected the boy from his mother. The real shock came after the mission, when Hayama flat out told them that most clients were no better behaved than the toddler had been. That was when they learned that diplomacy was a skill that a smart shinobi cultivated in order to keep the client both happy and biddable during the course of a mission; especially on escort missions where the client's life was their responsibility and a conflict with the client could see both them and their client killed by bandits or missing nin.

Not long after that babysitting job, Team Fourteen began taking two to three babysitting missions per week; for practice and experience. They also took dog walking, gardening, and courier missions within the village (the latter requiring them to play messenger service for various businesses). By the end of September, the team had completed sixteen D Rank Missions on top of their usual training schedule. They would then have two days of light training and two days off before they took their first mission out of the village; a C Rank Courier Mission to a shinobi outpost midway between Konoha and Hi no Kuni's southern border.

The mission would be completed without a single hitch and the round trip between the outpost and Konoha would take a total of six days. During their journey, Hayama-sensei would test all three boys on their survival skills and situational awareness outside of the village. He also worked with them on their tracking and scouting skills in order to get them into the habit of constantly being on high alert the moment they stepped outside of the village walls.

Each night when it was time to set up camp, Hayama would have one of them pick the location of their latest camp. He would then have the three of them help him set up a series of simple warning traps that would announce the approach of any enemies before he tested them on their observational skills; having each one of them recite a list of nearby landmarks that could be used for points of reference, the number of animal tracks they had seen while setting up their traps, and any anomalies that they noticed.

Kojimaru and Tenzou did very well during those tests due to all of the times they'd been camping with Kosuke. Tenzou had also shown an aptitude for trapping while Kojimaru had a knack for picking out the best camping spots. Aoba didn't do too badly during those tests considering that his survival training had been no where near as extensive as the two six year olds. Surprisingly, there was no resentment on Aoba's part over the two six year olds out performing him. Any jealousy he might have felt towards them had been smothered by the weeks of training and working together with the two younger boys and seeing them drive themselves into the ground without any complaints or hesitation.

It helped that the two boys had come to see Aoba as something of an older brother and often followed his lead during the missions because of that. That the two six year olds never bragged about their skills or abilities and that they put just as much, if not more, effort into the team training and missions as Aoba did also helped. Aoba also clearly recalled what had happened to those bullies that had dared pick on either boy and Aoba had no desire to wind up on the receiving end of one of their more humiliating pranks.

Upon returning to Konoha at the end of the mission, Team Fourteen would be given a single day off before they spent seven solid days training. At the end of those seven days, they would be given their second mission outside of the village; this time they were to escort a trio of future Academy students back to Konoha from a shinobi outpost that was close to the Hi no Kuni and Yu no Kuni boarder. They were one of eighteen teams being sent out on similar mission; the village seeking to increase the number of new Genin coming out of the Academy.

Team Fourteen would make it up to the outpost in record time as they spent less time on traveling lessons and more time traveling. They would then rest at the outpost for the night while they waited for the last of their charges to arrive. There was a tense moment the next day when one of the boys they would be escorting back to the village complained about being escorted by babies (the insult directed at Kojimaru and Tenzou). Hayama shut the kid up by telling him he was more than welcome to stay behind when they left; the Jounin refusing to let a potential Academy student disrespect his Genin when there was a chance he would one day work beside the two younger boys on a mission where a lack of teamwork could get one of them killed. Needless to say, the boy didn't make another remark about their age.

They had only been on the road back to Konoha for two days (their pace drastically reduced due to the trio they were escorting being untrained) when their group stumbled into a trio of Iwa scouts.

At the time, Kojimaru had been running point through the trees roughly ten yards in front of his team and their charges on Hayama-sensei's instructions in order to scout for potential threats along their route. It was supposed to just be another practice run since this part of the forest was thought to be secure. Kojimaru never expected to come face to face with an Iwa shinobi that had been climbing up the tree that Kojimaru had just landed on (the other shinobi obviously in the tree in order to scout the surrounding terrain).

The six year old stared at the man for two long heartbeats before he dove backwards off of the tree and let out a piercing whistle (the designated signal to warn the rest of the team of threats if the element of surprise had been lost) to alert his team to the danger. The foreign shinobi cursed out loud and called out to his teammates even as he followed Kojimaru down the tree. Kojimaru had an advantage though; the tree was his to command. A pulse of chakra saw several vines and branches snaking out to tangle up the enemy shinobi chasing him while another tree branch snaked out to grab Kojimaru and sling him into another tree. The delaying tactic would buy Kojimaru ninety-six precious seconds that he used to make his way back to his teammates.

"I ran into an Iwa scout, Hayama-sensei," Kojimaru reported as he landed right in front of the Jounin. "There were at least two others with him and he's right behind me."

"Form up and protect our charges," Hayama ordered as he drew his katana at the same time as the trio of Iwa shinobi burst through the trees. "Be ready to run when I tell you to."

The three Genin silently complied with the order as they each drew a kunai and spread themselves out around the three terrified children. Knowing that Iwa shinobi were rather famous for their doton jutsu, Kojimaru crouched down and slapped his empty left hand against the ground in order to grow a tangle of roots beneath their feet that would make it harder for their foes to burrow beneath them or use that section of earth to attack them. A second sharp burst of chakra then froze the ground solid to further hinder the Iwa shinobi.

"You two deal with the brats; I'll take care of their Jounin," the Iwa shinobi that Kojimaru had startled ordered in a cold voice.

The battle started just seconds later as the first shinobi charged straight at a cursing Hayama while the other two split up and moved around Hayama to get to the Genin and their charges. Kojimaru took a deep breath and unleashed a wave of shuriken at the man that was rushing towards him. He followed up his first attack with a kunai affixed with a fake explosive tag that had the man halting his forward motion and flinging himself backwards in an effort to avoid the expected explosion that never came. The feint bought the six year old more than enough time to send out a second wave of shuriken that wasn't as easily deflected or avoided.

That just seemed to piss the man off though as he ran through a series of hand seals before slamming his hands down on the ground as he bellowed out, "**Doton: Doryuusou no Jutsu**!"

Countless stone spears surged up from the ground around Kojimaru's feet. The stone spikes grew slower than normal though thanks to the roots and frozen ground; giving Kojimaru more than enough time to dodge the death trap and shift the three civilian children further out of danger. The roots of the nearest tree then rose up out of the ground to wrap themselves around the man's feet before they sucked him down into the ground until he was trapped chest deep in the dirt. Kojimaru then dropped his hands to the ground and poured his chakra into the grass and dirt in order to further tie the man up in roots to prevent him from escaping.

Kojimaru let out a growl of frustration when the man he had just captured melted into mud just before the actual man burst up out of the dirt at his feet (Kojimaru no longer standing over the patch of frozen and root laced ground) and punched the six year old in the stomach with a rock covered fist. Pain unexpectedly exploded in Kojimaru's stomach and he let out a sharp cry and coughed up blood as he his feet left the ground with the force of the blow. He was still in the air when a second punch to his stomach from the man's other hand doubled the amount of pain he felt and sent him flying backwards.

Tenzou's cry of shock and rage filled Kojimaru's ears for a brief moment before pain blossomed throughout his body once more as he hit the ground hard. Ignoring the pain as best he could, Kojimaru lifted his head in time to see half a dozen beams of wood wrap themselves around the Iwa shinobi that had punched him.

"Are you okay, Kojimaru!?" Tenzou demanded as he dashed around the frightened trio of children to reach the injured six year old's side.

"Hurts," Kojimaru gasped even as he pushed himself up, wrapped one hand over his deeply bruised stomach, and searched for the other two enemy shinobi. "Where's the other…?"

The clash of metal against metal drew both children's attention as they snapped their heads around to find Aoba facing off against the second shinobi. Tenzou rushed off to help their teammate while Kojimaru staggered over to their charges to protect them. The sound of snapping wood soon caught his attention and he whipped his head back around to the man that had punched him to find him breaking free of Tenzou's Mokuton bindings.

Frightened and in pain, Kojimaru relaxed his control over his chakra completely and reached out to the trees once more and this time the branches of a nearby oak grabbed the man and pulled him off of his feet. Additional branches from other trees joined the oak to wrap the man from neck to ankle in thick branches that fused themselves together in order to prevent him from using his strength to break free. A solid punch to the back of the head from a coiled branch would knock the man unconscious at that point. Kojimaru then pulled their three charges back up onto their feet and herded them towards a pair of evergreen trees that were several yards away from both enemies.

As soon as they were standing between the trees, the branches of the two trees wove together around them to form a solid wall even as vines sprouted up from the ground to weave themselves into the living wall. Beneath the ground, the roots of the two trees thickened and shifted to form a tight network of obstacles that would prevent someone from easily digging up under them. The last thing Kojimaru did to secure the small safe house was to once again freeze the ground as far down as he could to make it even harder for someone to dig through the immediate area.

"Stay together and stay in here while I go help the others keep the Iwa shinobi from finding you," Kojimaru instructed as he climbed up the wall of branches towards the small opening that had been left for him. Once he reached the exit, he turned back to add, "I will come let you out as soon as it is safe."

He ducked out of the refuge as soon as the children nodded their compliance and quickly sealed the exit behind him so no one could sneak into the refuge. Kojimaru then threw himself back into the fight as he provided support to Tenzou and Aoba from the trees while they fought the third shinobi. He didn't dare go too far from the other children even though he was pretty certain that they would be safe where they were. He also knew that his stomach was still healing from the hits he'd taken earlier; his insides bruised deeply and still aching fiercely. In between helping his teammates, Kojimaru would monitor his unconscious attacker and sneak glances at the battle their sensei was fighting with the final Iwa scout.

A small explosion would rock the area nearly twenty minutes later while Kojimaru's eyes were on Hayama-sensei and he jerked his eyes back towards Tenzou and Aoba in fear. His eyes widened in shock when his eyes landed upon the dead body of the Iwa shinobi lying amidst the shattered remains of more of Tenzou's Mokuton beams. The six year old felt the tension leave him when he realized that both of his teammates were still alive and relatively unharmed aside from the cuts and bruises they'd gained during the fight combined with the mild chakra exhaustion.

Kojimaru then turned his attention back to Hayama in time to see the Jounin dodge a large dragon made out of dirt and rocks. The dragon hadn't actually been aimed at Hayama though and Kojimaru felt his insides twist as he realized it was going to hit a semi-exhausted Tenzou from behind. Crying a out a sharp warning to his teammates, Kojimaru threw himself from his perch in the trees so that he landed in between the deadly attack and his best friend as he threw his hands up in a desperate bid to stop the powerful avalanche of dirt and rock.

* * *

**Translations:** Japanese to English

Doton: Doryuusou no Jutsu – Earthen Rising Spears  
Hi no Kuni – Fire Country  
Katon: Endan – Fireball  
Kinobori no Waza – Tree climbing  
Meisai Gakure no Jutsu – Camouflage Concealment Technique  
Shunshin no Jutsu – Body Flicker Technique  
Suimen Hokou no Waza – Water walking  
Yu no Kuni – Hot Springs Country

* * *

**11-14-15:** _Minor edits made to chapter to fix spelling/grammar mistakes and removed unnecessary author's notes._


	9. The Promotion

**Disclaimer:** _All HP characters are the property of JKR, the WB, and respective publishing companies and all Naruto characters are the property of Masashi Kishimoto. This is nothing more than a simple FanFiction that I have written. I have made no money from this or any of the other stories I have posted on this or other sites._

**Warnings:** _Mild to moderate violence, character death, alternate universe (i.e. kiss canon goodbye), OCC behaviors and personalities, a number of original characters and obscure canon characters to flesh out family trees, random chosen last names to give a number of characters surnames, and who knows what else._

**AN:** _This story is self-beta'd; so there may be occasional grammatical or spelling errors that crop up every now and then and for those I apologize in advance._

* * *

Chapter Nine: The Promotion

_October 23, 0286 AtD, 1:38 PM  
Unnamed stretch of forest in Hi no Kuni_

Tenzou whipped around and watched as an eight foot tall, ten foot wide, and three foot thick wall of tightly packed ice spikes mixed through with thick roots shot forth from the ground at his best friend's feet to block the dirt and rock construct that had been bearing down on him. Kojimaru then dropped heavily to his knees in exhaustion while a deluge of dirt and rocks swept over the top of his wall and rained down on him. Rushing forward, Tenzou grabbed hold of his best friend and desperately struggled to pull him free of the mud before he could be completely buried. Aoba joined him just two seconds later and together they dragged Kojimaru out of the mud but not before the two of them had been covered from head to toe in dirt and hit with more than a couple of rocks.

"Kojimaru! Kojimaru, answer me!" Tenzou cried frantically as he clutched at his best friend's shirt and tried to ignore the curl of terror that was crawling through his stomach at the mere thought that he'd just lost his friend. "Don't be dead. You can't be dead. You promised to never leave me!"

"M'fine, Tenzou," Kojimaru slurred wearily as his eyes fluttered for a moment before they opened up and focused on Tenzou's face. "Just tired… and still sore."

"Baka," Tenzou fondly rasped in sheer relief as he leaned down to press his dirt covered forehead against Kojimaru's dirt covered forehead as a wave of weakness passed through him. "Why did you do that?"

"You weren't looking, ahou," Kojimaru retorted with weary fondness and exasperation even as his trembling arms snaked around Tenzou's waist to weakly hug him. "I couldn't let you get squashed."

"Boys…? Are the three of you alright back there?" Hayama-sensei demanded from the other side of the dirt coated wall of ice and wood before Tenzou could think of a proper retort.

"Mostly," Aoba called back from somewhere behind Tenzou.

"What happened to the other two enemies?"

"One of them is de…dead and the other one is tied up in the trees," Aoba replied before he spun around and vomited as the knowledge that he'd killed a man hit him hard; the nine year old had been the one to throw the half dozen kunai that carried the exploding tags that had killed the second man after Tenzou had wrapped him up in wood – the older boy had not anticipated the man not being able to dodge or block any portion of the attack and therefore used far more tags than necessary to subdue him.

"Where are our three charges?"

"Kojimaru tucked them up in a couple of trees to keep them safe," Tenzou answered as he glanced back at the unnatural barricade of evergreen branches that held the trio.

"Good job, boys. Are any of you injured?" Hayama asked as he stepped out from behind the ice and root structure that Kojimaru had grown to protect Tenzou and Aoba from the giant earth jutsu that could have killed them; the Jounin dragging the battered and unconscious enemy shinobi he'd fought behind him.

"Just scratched up and bruised a bit, I think," Aoba answered weakly as he wiped his mouth with the back of his arm.

"And exhausted," Tenzou added as he scrubbed at his face and ignored the deep ache of chakra exhaustion that clawed at his nerves now that he no longer had his fear and anger to distract him.

"That is a relief," Hayama murmured as he unceremoniously released his prisoner and made his way over to the trio of battered and bruised Genin. "I'm very proud of all three of you for not panicking and for not abandoning our charges during the fight. Why don't the three of you go check on the other children and keep an eye out for more Iwa scouts while I secure our prisoners."

"Hai, sensei," all three boys murmured in unison.

Tenzou let out a groan as he reluctantly climbed to his feet before he helped Kojimaru stand up. The two six year olds then leaned against one another as they staggered in the direction of the wooden sanctuary where Kojimaru had hidden away the civilian children they were escorting to Konoha. Tenzou could hear Aoba shuffling along right behind them and he felt a thread of worry catch hold of him as he recalled the way he'd activated his Mokuton the moment he'd heard Kojimaru crying out in pain.

"You worry too loud," Kojimaru murmured as the two of them reached the twisted evergreens.

"I used the Mokuton in front of Aoba and the others."

"Yes, you did and I used both of my Kekkei Genkai in front of him too."

"I don't care," Aoba interjected before Tenzou or Kojimaru could say anything further. "I'm just glad the fight is over and that all three of us are alive. Besides, I already knew that Kojimaru-kun could animate the trees; kind of hard to miss the way tree branches would come alive all the time while we were training. Also kind of hard to miss the way the air is always colder around him. Although, a bit of a warning the next time you use it would be nice. I nearly dropped my kunai when I saw you grow those beams of wood!"

"Gomen, I didn't know that would happen when I got angry because I'd never used it before… not like Kojimaru who's been using his Kekkei Genkai for years," Tenzou offered contritely.

Kojimaru pulled away from Tenzou at that point as he placed his hands on the trees that were protecting their charges and softly stated, "We would have told you sooner and used it during training but we're not supposed to talk about it and you can't tell any one now that you know because it's a big secret that no one is supposed to know."

"Is it because you are the last of the Senju?"

"We're not Senju," Tenzou corrected with a shrug. "We'll explain it later once we're back in Konoha."

"Okay."

Tenzou sagged against the trees in response to Aoba's calm agreement and closed his eyes in relief only to jerk upright when he saw a brief flash of the three children they were escorting back to Konoha huddled together in the middle of the tree fort that Kojimaru hadn't yet dispelled behind his closed eye lids. He then stared hard at the trees before he reached out to touch them again and once more saw what was happening inside of the protective barrier of wood.

"Kojimaru…?" Tenzou called shakily as he began breathing faster.

"What, Tenzou?"

"Why am I seeing inside of the trees? Why didn't you tell me that would happen when I touched the trees?"

"Nani…? What do you mean you can see inside of the trees?"

"When I touch the trees, I can see the other kids huddled up inside."

"Weird; nothing like that ever happened to me," Kojimaru replied with a shrug of his shoulders before he closed his eyes and returned his hands to the woven wall of branches and vines.

Tenzou blinked in surprise over that as he would have thought that they would both be able to do the same exact things since they both had the Mokuton. He then frowned as he recalled the rough wooden beams he'd grown from his hands; he'd never seen Kojimaru grow beams of wood like that. Kojimaru usually just made the trees come to life or made them grow bigger.

"Can you grow wood from your body?" Tenzou asked as he watched a couple of the branches of the evergreens start untangling themselves from the vines as Kojimaru encouraged the two trees to form an opening in the strange living fort he'd made.

"Sort of… I can sometimes grow vines that turn into branches but they look nothing like the beams you used earlier."

"Oh. Will you show me when we get home?"

"Hai."

"Thanks," Tenzou murmured before he slipped into the opening that Kojimaru had made and put the differences between his Mokuton and Kojimaru's Mokuton out of his mind as three sets of frightened eyes turned to look at him. "It's okay, we're safe now. The fight is over."

"Are we leaving now?"

"Not yet," Kojimaru tiredly answered as he slipped in behind Tenzou. "We need to rest for a bit so that we will be able to fight again in case we run into more trouble."

"I'm scared," the youngest of the three boys (who was still a year older than both of the younger Genin) whimpered.

"Everyone gets scared sometimes," Kojimaru replied as he pulled out a storage scroll and began unsealing everything he would need to make a pot of tea.

Tenzou shook his head over his friend's obsession with tea before he moved to help him. The familiar activity actually helped center both six year olds and the tea itself seemed to help calm down the three untrained civilians. Once the tea was ready, Tenzou slipped out of the fort to pass a cup to Aoba along with one of the tasty energy bars that Kosuke made for them to take on missions for those times when there wasn't time to cook a full meal. The six year old then returned to sit with Kojimaru as they kept their charges occupied in order to keep them from panicking again while their teammate stood guard outside.

* * *

_October 27, 0286 AtD, 6:21 PM  
Konohagakure no Sato, Hi no Kuni_

Kojimaru wearily placed one foot in front of the other while he tried to stay focused on the world around him. It was difficult though; he was dog dead tired and wished for nothing more than to crawl into his own bed and sleep for a week or two. His nerves were completely shot as well and the constant stress and fear of waiting for the next team of enemy shinobi to burst out of the ground and attack them had only worn him down further. He'd been flinching at every little sound for roughly four days now and the only thing that kept him from snapping was the professional calm that Hayama-sensei maintained.

Shaking away the cobwebs of exhaustion that clung to his mind, Kojimaru took the time to study the twilight shadowed road in front of him for a long moment before he glanced over his shoulder. The three prospective Academy students that they were escorting back to the village looked even worse than Kojimaru felt; their clothes were filthy and torn, their hair tangled messes, and their faces drawn and haggard from the rough travel. They hadn't complained once though and Kojimaru thought they'd make good shinobi once they had been properly trained; the six year old comparing them to the handful of former classmates that had failed the Genin Exam during the past two years.

His eyes then drifted to Tenzou where his best friend was walking behind the trio. His green-turned-blue eyes tightened in repressed anger and guilt as he took in the fading bruise that still marred the other six year old's face where a rock had hit the other boy when he'd fished Kojimaru out of the dirt from the Iwa shinobi's final jutsu. Tenzou smiled and gave Kojimaru a brief wave before he returned his attention to the forest on either side of the road and Kojimaru automatically waved back though he couldn't quite bring himself to smile in return. He hadn't smiled since the moment he'd run into that first Iwa scout.

Kojimaru turned his eyes back towards the front for a moment as he too checked for potential threats before his eyes made their way back behind him once more. This time, his gaze fell upon the two men that they had taken prisoner. Both men were trussed up with ninja wire and chakra suppression tags to prevent them from escaping. He could feel the air around him growing colder as he recalled the way they had attempted to kill him and his team and Kojimaru forced himself to calm down as he tore his eyes away from them.

His gaze then landed on the zombie-like Aoba. Aoba had not been sleeping very well since the fight; the older boy's dreams haunted with nightmares. He also hadn't been eating very much. It hurt Kojimaru to see his honorary older brother in such pain over the death of their third and final attacker. The six year old couldn't help but blame himself for Aoba's suffering even if he knew, logically, that it wasn't his fault. He just couldn't help but believe that it had been his own failure to focus on the older boy's fight with the enemy that had caused his teammate's pain.

Facing forwards once more, Kojimaru fought down his shame and focused again on his duty to protect their charges even as he vowed to get stronger.

They hadn't gone more than another dozen yards along the road when Hayama-sensei dropped down out of the trees in front of Kojimaru. Kojimaru flinched before he steeled himself and lowered the kunai that had appeared in his hand without his knowledge. He flinched again when his eyes landed on the partially healed cut that ran perpendicular to the right side of Hayama's mouth. He blamed himself for that too. His sensei had been distracted by his warning cry at the end of his [Hayama's] fight and had been injured by his attacker as a result.

"I have good news boys; we're only about a twenty minute walk from the gates of Konoha. In fact, as soon as we round the next bend in the road, you'll be able to see the walls of the village rising above the forest."

"Yokatta," Kojimaru breathed in relief as he almost smiled.

"Yosh! I can already taste Emiko's candied walnuts," Tenzou declared happily.

"Yes, well, your sampling of treats will have to wait until we turn our prisoners over to the ANBU, deliver our charges to the Chuunin on duty at the Academy Dormitories, give the Hokage our report, and stop by the hospital for a medical evaluation," Hayama interjected before the excitement at being home could truly take hold of the two youngest Genin.

Kojimaru grumbled under his breath as soon as the words medical evaluation passed through his sensei's lips; he hated being poked and prodded by the medics. It didn't help that he knew that there was really no reason for him personally to see a medic; his injuries had healed up without a trace by the second morning after the fight (the healing had taken slightly longer than normal because he'd exhausted himself when he'd grown the large wall of ice spikes and roots). He really just wanted to go home, savor a cup of tea while listening to Kosuke-oji tell him about the current state of the garden, and crawl into bed.

"Stop your grumbling, Kojimaru-kun; you know as well as I do that you are required to sit through a medical exam after fighting an enemy on a mission regardless of whether or not you were injured."

"I know, sensei; I still don't like being poked and prodded. Medics are heathens… they only serve weak tea."

Hayama snorted in amused exasperation while Aoba and Tenzou both sniggered over Kojimaru's complaint about the tea that was served in the hospital. While Kojimaru had enjoyed those first few cups that he'd been given, he'd never been satisfied with such a weak tea again after he'd been introduced to real tea by Kosuke.

Twenty-three minutes later, Kojimaru watched as two masked ANBU guards hauled their prisoners off to Konoha's Torture and Interrogation Department. Kojimaru hoped and prayed that he never saw either man ever again. He then promptly turned away from the disappearing pair as he moved to follow Hayama-sensei and the others towards the Hokage tower. They made one brief stop on the way to deliver their trio of charges to the Chuunin on duty at the Academy Dorms that they'd be living in for the next year or two while they took classes at the Academy.

It wasn't long before Team Fourteen was standing in the middle of the Hokage's office giving their report on their escort mission. Kojimaru and Tenzou just listened to their sensei cover everything that had happened after they'd run into the trio of enemy scouts while they leaned against one another and tried not to fall asleep. Most of the report just went in one ear and out the other though; the two six year olds far too exhausted to really pay attention to what was being said.

Eventually, the team was dismissed and Hayama led them out of the tower where they immediately ran into an obviously worried Nara Shikaku. The moment the teen saw the two six year olds, he sank in on himself in pure relief before he adopted his usual air of lazy indifference as he approached the group.

"Mendoukusei," Shikaku complained as he slowed to a stop beside Kojimaru and Tenzou. "Okaasan has been worrying herself sick over how late you are; we expected you back three days ago."

"Please extend my apologies to your mother for worrying her," Hayama stated as he briefly glanced down at the two six year olds that Shikaku had yet to take his eyes off of. "Our delay was unplanned and unavoidable."

"Shall I take the two troublemakers off your hands then?"

"I'm afraid that I can't release them into your care just yet; we have a pressing appointment at the hospital."

"Mendoukusei, I was not aware that there was an increase in the amount of bandit activity between Konoha and the northern outposts along the Yu no Kuni borders."

"Not bandits," Kojimaru corrected automatically before he scrunched up his nose and demanded, "How come you are the one that hunted us down? Where's ojisan?"

"Kosuke left on a mission two days ago and he asked me to keep an eye out for you while he was gone. Knowing just how inseparable you and your shadow are, I figured I'd save myself the headache and just collect both of you before I delivered Tenzou-kun to his aunt and uncle," Shikaku explained as he frowned down at the six year old. "Hayama-san, would like a hand escorting your Genin to the hospital for their medical evaluation?"

"Suit yourself," Hayama replied with a shrug of his shoulders as he began shepherding the three Genin towards the hospital once more.

Kojimaru had barely taken two steps when he felt himself being lifted up off of the ground and swung up to sit on Shikaku's shoulders. Tenzou was picked up just as soon as Kojimaru had been settled. Kojimaru let out an indignant huff over being carried (he was a big boy now and a shinobi to boot, thank you very much) before he slouched down and propped his chin on the top of Shikaku's head (his bushy ponytail made for a comfy pillow) as his exhaustion caught up to him once more. Half a dozen steps later, both boys were out cold; Tenzou's head pillowed on Kojimaru's knee.

Kojimaru started awake to the feeling of falling and he gave a sharp cry as he tried to twist around in mid-air only to suddenly find himself being unceremoniously dumped face first into a pillow. Shaking off his disorientation, Kojimaru rolled over and looked up to find Shikaku smirking down at him. He soon realized that he must have fallen asleep while being carried by the teen and he automatically stuck his tongue out at the Nara before he dropped back on the bed and snuggled deeper into the pillow.

"Don't get too comfortable, Kojimaru-kun; the medic will be here in just a moment to start your exam," Hayama-sensei instructed from where he was leaning against the door keeping an eye on all three Genin.

"Hai, sensei," Kojimaru replied in resignation as he pushed himself up once more (to avoid the temptation of falling back asleep) and glanced around the hospital room until he found both Tenzou and Aoba seated on the beds situated to either side of the artificial redhead.

True to Hayama's prediction, the medic arrived just a scant three minutes later. Kojimaru would then spend the next hour watching the medic first scan Aoba and then Tenzou. The man was just preparing to start Kojimaru's exam when the examination room's door opened once more to admit Yamanaka Inoichi.

"Ah, finally found you! You are one hard team to track down," Inoichi declared as he stepped further into the room and closed the door behind him. The blond then dug out a scroll and passed it to Hayama as he stated, "Kasai sent me to scan your team's memories of the skirmish you fought against the Iwa scouts you encountered."

"Hokage-sama warned me that Kasai was likely to send someone," Hayama murmured as he broke open the seal on the scroll and quickly read through it. "You can start with either Aoba or Tenzou as Kojimaru is currently in the middle of his medical evaluation."

Kojimaru squirmed uncomfortably as the medic's glowing green hands were pressed to his forehead as the man started his scan; a knot of worry forming in his stomach as he vaguely recalled the first time that Inoichi had peeked at his memories. The tediousness of the medic scanning every inch of his body with a diagnostic jutsu soon pushed all thoughts of the inevitable Mind Delving out of his mind as the man seemed to purposefully hit each and every single one of his ticklish spots. The man would then admonish Kojimaru to stop squirming before hitting the exact same spot a second time.

The six year old swore the man was doing it on purpose.

By the time that the medic had finished scanning Kojimaru for injuries and other health issues, Inoichi had scanned both of his teammates and his sensei's memories of the fight. The six year old didn't even have time to sit up before the long haired Jounin was standing over him. The knot of worry reformed his stomach in an instant as he desperately wished to melt into the bed in order to escape the ordeal.

Inoichi must have seen the fear in his eyes because the blond teasingly asked, "Do I need to bribe you with a cup of tea to get you to hold still?"

"Iie… I'm not falling for that one again," Kojimaru retorted as he scowled up at the man.

"Can't blame a guy for trying, gaki," Inoichi chortled as he poked Kojimaru in the side. "Do try to relax, Kojimaru-kun. I promise that I'm not going to dig into your older memories; I just need to see the encounter from your perspective."

Kojimaru just closed his eyes and scrunched up his nose as he tried to relax. He felt Inoichi's hand settle on his forehead a heartbeat later and he couldn't help but tense up as he felt the teen's chakra flare briefly before he felt the dizzying disorientation of having someone else slip into his mind. He let out a single strangled whine over the feeling before his attention was drawn to the memory that Inoichi was unfurling.

The six year old felt a strong urge to lock away the horrible memory only to jump when Inoichi's voice echoed inside of his head, '_Stop fighting me, gaki; relax, I'm half way done._' Taking a deep breath, Kojimaru tried to blank his mind so he didn't have to watch the memory with Inoichi only to huff when the teen barked at him a second time. '_I said relax, not clear your mind! Now I have to start all over._'

The next time the memory began playing out, Kojimaru bit his lip and held his breath in an effort to ignore it even as the air around him dropped several degrees in his distress. The ordeal was over just a few minutes later and Kojimaru curled into a ball and wrapped his arms around his throbbing skull the moment Inoichi removed his hand from his forehead. His lungs began burning and it took a moment for Kojimaru to remember that he was holding his breath. The six year old took several shuddering breaths at that point as he promptly buried the memory down in the darkest depths of his soul.

"You know, you wouldn't have ended up with a headache if you didn't try to fight me, gaki," Inoichi dryly pointed out as he signaled for the medic to scan Kojimaru's head once more.

"I wasn't trying to fight you. I just didn't want to see the fight again. You said you were going to look at my memories, not make me watch them again. And you barked at me in my mind."

"How odd; it is very rare for someone your age to develop a high enough level of cognitive awareness to allow one to both detect a mental intrusion and get a clear picture of exactly which memories are being viewed by the intruder. I shall endeavor to remember that if there ever comes a time when it becomes necessary for me to view your memories again."

"It also explains his rather extreme reaction to the first time that you used that particular jutsu on the troublesome gaki," Shikaku pointed out from where he was propped up against the wall between Kojimaru's and Tenzou's bed.

"Are you going to be alright, Kojimaru-kun?" Tenzou asked as he slipped off of his bed and scrambled up onto the other bed beside his friend.

"Hai, the pain's already gone," Kojimaru replied before he gave Inoichi a baleful glare as he declared, "You owe me a cup of tea and an order of taiyaki now."

The adults in the room all laughed in response to that declaration. The three Genin were dismissed not long after that and Shikaku took both six year olds home after Inoichi promised to collect Kojimaru's tea and taiyaki after he gave his report to Kasai. Kojimaru would only make it halfway through supper before he dozed off mid-bite; much to the amusement of Shikarou and Shikaku.

* * *

_October 31, 0286 AtD, 10:30 AM  
Konohagakure no Sato, Hi no Kuni_

Kojimaru curiously followed his sensei and teammates into the Hokage's office. He grew a little worried when he saw the masked Kasai and a handful of other adults that he didn't know standing about the office. He perked up a bit when his noticed Shikarou in the room and he intentionally stared at the back of man's head until he turned around (the man just as sensitive to the feeling of eyes watching him as his nephew). Kojimaru then cheekily waved hello to the friendly and often lazy clan head. The man snorted in amusement even as he returned the wave. Feeling far better, Kojimaru shuffled into place beside Tenzou as Hayama lined the trio up in front of the Hokage's desk.

"Each time I send a fresh young Genin team outside of Konoha's gates on a mission, I can't help but worry if I made the right decision," the Sandaime began once the three Genin had stopped fidgeting. "My doubts and concerns only grew stronger after the hostilities between Konoha and Iwa escalated to the point where war was declared between our two villages under the knowledge that there is a fifty-fifty chance that I am sending half trained children to their deaths each time I assign just such a mission to a team with less than a year's experience on the force."

"Team Fourteen was one of eighteen such teams that I sent out this month to collect perspective Academy students from the borders of Hi no Kuni and escort them back to the village. Those teams that were sent to potentially hostile areas were selected based upon their experience and ranks while those teams that were sent to what were supposed to have been safe zones were chosen so that they could gain a measure of experience on what should have been harmless escort missions with a low chance of stumbling across a few bandits. It pained me to learn that I had miscalculated the threat level on the mission that I assigned to Team Fourteen."

"I was relieved beyond words when I learned that all three of you survived your unexpected and violent encounter with a group of enemy scouts. I am also very proud of the way all three of you handled the encounter and the courage that you showed in not only facing opponents far older and stronger than you but in standing your ground to protect the three children that had been entrusted to your care. Your bravery and determination did more than just save the lives of your charges; you protected the village by capturing two of your three attackers; something that has allowed us to gain a significant amount of intel on our enemies current plans which will, in turn, save lives."

"After reviewing the mission report and the information collected from your memories of the fight alongside of my most trusted advisors and your Jounin sensei, it has been decided that all three of you shall receive field promotions to the rank of Chuunin. I do not bestow this honor upon you lightly; to do so would be to dishonor you and would inevitably place you in harm's way the moment you were given a mission beyond your current skill level. That said, it is an honor that I feel each of you have earned," the Sandaime finished as he smiled warmly at the three boys.

"Genin Yamashiro Aoba, please step forward," the man with red fang marks on his face intoned as he unsealed a green flack jacket and patiently helped the nine year old into the flack jacket. "Congratulations, Chuunin Yamashiro; wear your flack jacket with pride."

"Arigatou," Aoba murmured as bowed to both the Jounin and to the Hokage.

"Genin Tenzou, front and center," Kasai half barked as he pulled out another flack jacket. "Congratulations, Chuunin Tenzou; wear your flack jacket with pride."

"Arigatou gozaimasu," Tenzou replied with a beaming smile as he followed Aoba's example and bowed to Kasai and the Hokage.

"Genin Kojimaru, would you please step forward," Shikarou requested as he unsealed a final flack jacket.

Kojimaru hesitated, his eyes darting between Kasai, the Hokage, his sensei, and Shikarou several times before he felt Tenzou give him a sharp nudge forward. When he did finally move to stand in front of the Nara Clan Head, the man crouched down in front of Kojimaru and gently helped him into the flack jacket. Kojimaru never took his eyes off of Shikarou's face as the heavier than expected protective vest was settled over his shoulders and chest to fall half way to his knees so that he felt like he was swimming in the jacket.

"Congratulations, Chuunin Kojimaru; wear your flack jacket with pride and honor."

Shikarou met his gaze for a brief moment, the man's dark eyes brimming with both pride and sadness. Kojimaru let his eyes fall to the floor as the Nara Clan Head rose to his feet and ruffled Kojimaru's hair before he snuck a glance over his shoulder at his sensei who rolled his eyes and gestured for him to bow and say thank you. He sighed and looked forward once more before he let his gaze meet Kasai's gaze through his flame etched match, his eyes flickering between blue and green for several heartbeats before he looked away again and bowed deeply to the Hokage.

When he straightened up, Kojimaru clutched the bottom edge of his flack jacket as he offered a slightly hoarse and more than a little confused, "Arigatou."

They were dismissed less than a minute later and Kojimaru barely paid any attention to where he was going as he wandered out of the Hokage's office at a far slower pace than his teammates. Just before he passed through the door, the six year old glanced back over his shoulder one last time; his eyes locking briefly with Kasai's before sliding over to Shikarou. He would be pulled out of the room at that point by an exasperated Tenzou and dragged through the hallways by his friend until they reached the exit.

Kojimaru remained ambivalent about his promotion for the next three days and during that time he refused to even wear his flack jacket. On one hand, he felt rather excited about being made a Chuunin since it was proof that he was no longer the frightened little boy he had been nearly three years ago. And at the same time, he worried that Kosuke would be angry or disappointed in him. Or worse, that his promotion would hurt his godfather; who himself was still a Genin.

Four days after being promoted to Chuunin, Kosuke returned from his mission and Shikaku escorted a nervous Kojimaru home. The Nara heir then spilled the beans both about the reason why Kojimaru's team had been late in returning home and about the six year old being promoted to Chuunin alongside both of his teammates. Kosuke was proud of Kojimaru and more than a little relieved that Team Fourteen had survived their encounter with the Iwa scouts mostly unharmed, though the six year old could see the same inexplicable sadness that had lurked in Shikarou's eyes in his godfather's eyes.

* * *

**Translations:** Japanese to English

Arigatou (gozaimasu) – Thank you (very much)  
Baka – idiot  
Gaki – brat  
Hai – yes  
Iie – no  
Mendoukusei – how troublesome, what a drag, or this sucks (Shikamaru's catch phrase)  
Yokatta – What a relief or thank god  
Yosh – okay/all right (an exclamation)

* * *

**11-14-15:** _Minor edits made to chapter to fix spelling/grammar mistakes and removed unnecessary author's notes._


	10. The Training

**Disclaimer:** _All HP characters are the property of JKR, the WB, and respective publishing companies and all Naruto characters are the property of Masashi Kishimoto. This is nothing more than a simple FanFiction that I have written. I have made no money from this or any of the other stories I have posted on this or other sites._

**Warnings:** _Mild to moderate violence, character death, alternate universe (i.e. kiss canon goodbye), OCC behaviors and personalities, a number of original characters and obscure canon characters to flesh out family trees, random chosen last names to give a number of characters surnames, and who knows what else._

**AN:** _This story is self-beta'd; so there may be occasional grammatical or spelling errors that crop up every now and then and for those I apologize in advance._

* * *

Chapter Ten: The Training

_November 05, 0286 AtD through May 28, 0288 AtD  
Konohagakure no Sato, Hi no Kuni_

Acceptance over his promotion from Kosuke saw Kojimaru finally accepting his promotion and from that day forward, he wore his flack jacket with a quiet pride when the opportunity arose; which wasn't often though, because he practically swam in the thing and it tended to hinder him when he was sparring or training. Even Tenzou's flack jacket fit him better because the younger boy was several inches taller than Kojimaru. Aoba often teased him about playing dress-up with an adult's flack jacket whenever Kojimaru wore it.

Aside from their new protective accessories and the fancy titles to go with them, nothing really changed for Team Fourteen; they still trained hard and took missions several times a month. The only real difference was the number of outside missions that their team took; their promotion to Chuunin and their handling of the unexpected attack equating to them being good enough to take those missions that had a slightly higher chance of going wrong.

On the other hand, Tenzou and Kojimaru's private training was taken to the next level since they would be leaving the village more often.

Tenzou was now learning how to wield the true Mokuton while Kojimaru was working to control how much chakra he poured into the seal-less Hyouton and Mokuton formations he made when emotional and how to make them intentionally when he wasn't desperate, frightened, angry, or in pain. His godfather had attempted to teach him some of the same jutsu that Tenzou was being taught a year earlier but Kojimaru's Mokuton had unknowingly been corrupted by his magic; making all of the Senju scrolls he'd been given practically worthless unless he could modify them to work with his corrupted version of the Mokuton.

Both six year olds would still spend their free time training together but those clandestine training sessions had now come to include Aoba. Their older teammate had been floored when they'd told him about their pasts shortly after they'd returned to Konoha and just before their collective promotion after swearing the nine year old to secrecy. The fact that they'd previously hidden so much from their teammate could have created a wedge between the three of them but instead the revelation actually brought them even closer together because they trusted him enough to share those secrets with him when they could have kept silent on the matter due to the blanket gag-order that they were technically under.

During those training sessions, all three Chuunin worked on their nature transformation exercises, worked to integrate Tenzou and Kojimaru's Kekkei Genkai into their team fighting style, and pushed one another to grow stronger as they uncovered each other's less obvious weaknesses. After the first month of those clandestine training sessions, even Hayama began to notice the improvement of their teamwork and collaborative fighting style. Three months after that, their sensei secretly followed them to one of their after-training training sessions and crashed the session the moment he learned what they were up to.

That saw their off-schedule training sessions becoming slightly more structured as Hayama gave them specific exercises and goals to work on. He also occasionally supervised those training sessions in order to keep track of their progress and give them new goals the moment they reached the previous goal. The only thing that the Jounin didn't approve of was the way that Kojimaru and Tenzou were both sneaking about behind their guardians' backs in order to train together using their Kekkei Genkai when he knew that they weren't supposed to be doing so.

That had shamed the two young Chuunin into individually confessing to their respective guardian about their joint training sessions and the news that the other knew about their Kekkei Genkai. What followed was a huge meeting between Kosuke, Kisuke, Hayama, and both boys where Kosuke and Kisuke were both shocked to learn that both boys had been part of Orochimaru's experiments. Instead of getting angry that the six year olds had hidden the fact that they'd known about each other from the very beginning, they were praised for keeping the secret and helping one another.

Shinobi were supposed to be sneaky and secretive, after all.

Kasai, when he learned about that little meeting, was quite put out at first. After giving the matter some consideration, he saw the benefits in having people aside from himself and the two absent Sannin still loyal to the village being aware of both boys; there was never any guarantee that he would survive the war, after all, and someone would have to keep an eye on the boys. That didn't stop him from making plans to separate the pair the moment they were promoted to Jounin or if they joined ANBU at any point after they turned ten. He had been tempted to split them up right after they had been promoted to Chuunin but it was rather stupid to split up a cohesive team while the village was in the middle of a war.

Over the course of the next year and a half, Team Fourteen would grow in both skill and reputation (slight though the latter was); their team well known for both running into trouble on more than half of their missions and for never failing a mission no matter how much trouble they ended up in. More and more often, the missions they were sent on were the escort missions between Konoha and the various outposts; escorting supplies, civilians, important documents, and Academy students in and out of the village. Their team would also capture several more Iwa scouts and small assault squads during those missions as Iwa began pushing deeper into Hi no Kuni.

Kojimaru and Tenzou were hard pressed to keep their Kekkei Genkai secret during that time; especially during those missions where they ran into bandits or enemy shinobi. Keeping the captured enemies and criminals silent was a fairly easy matter; they were all either executed after being interrogated or their memories were carefully sealed by ANBU or altered by a Yamanaka before they were sent to prison or used in hostage exchanges (the latter only applying to prisoners of war). Civilians and clients were far harder to deal with since they couldn't be silenced in the typical way.

That security risk (since both of the young Chuunin were still somewhat vulnerable due to their age), would eventually be dealt with by Aoba; the older boy seeking specialized training from the T and I Department and the Yamanaka Clan in order to learn how to view, seal, erase, and manipulate memories in order to protect his teammates. The moment that Yamanaka Inohiko determined that Aoba was skilled enough (after six months of intensive training), that ability saw Team Fourteen shifting from an escort team to a capture and interrogation squad that was loosely affiliated with the T and I Department since Aoba's lessons hadn't stopped just because he was deemed adequate (though they would still be assigned courier and escort missions from time to time as well).

Kojimaru and Tenzou were the ones responsible for capturing their targets, Aoba would handle the field interrogations and memory modifications, and Hayama was their team's heavy fighter.

Shortly after the shift in their team's job description, another member was permanently assigned to their team in the form of Kanden Tekuno; a Jounin level shinobi that specialized in heavy explosive artillery and traps and an old teammate of their sensei's. Tenzou quickly fell in love with traps all over again after watching Tekuno trap five miles of forest over the course of a few hours and seeing those same traps incapacitate two squads of Iwa Chuunin that had managed to outflank Konoha's forces on the front lines. The Jounin wouldn't hesitate to take Tenzou under his wing to teach him an assortment of high level traps (with Hayama's consent).

Additionally, they were also assigned a part time member in the form of Kojimaru's godfather; Maruboshi Kosuke. As the lowest ranked adult on their squad, Kosuke was often left in charge of guarding their base camp while Hayama-sensei and Tekuno worked with the three boys to capture their targets. The first time Kosuke had been assigned to join their team on a mission, Kojimaru and Tenzou were torn between being mortified and ecstatic; they loved camping and training with Kosuke but they feared being treated like children while on a mission. The two boys needn't have worried; Kosuke had no problem keeping his personal relationship with the two boys out of the mission as he focused on his task in order to not distract the two boys from their assigned tasks.

Having his godfather nearby actually saw Kojimaru pushing himself harder during missions; the child afraid of disappointing his guardian or worse, being the reason that his guardian was injured during a mission. And, like his two teammates, Kojimaru found an area that he wished to focus on.

Due to his dual elemental Kekkei Genkai, Kojimaru was always going to be a heavy ninjutsu user; he had access to three of the five main elements, after all, and could wield two sub elements. His larger than average chakra reserves only increased his effectiveness as a ninjutsu user (though his reserves fell well short of the infamous Uzumaki clan at the moment). The pint sized Chuunin had no wish to limit himself to just ninjutsu though; even if he was slowly building up an impressive array of elemental based ninjutsu.

To that effect, Kojimaru turned to weapons instead. Specifically, he looked to create weapons out of the elements that he could wield. The reason for that was the idea that he would never run out of sharp and pointy things to throw and fight with so long as he still had chakra in his body. It also meant that he could reduce the weight of his utility kit by discarding most of his metal tools, which would give him more room to carry other essential supplies (such as a more extensive medical kit, extra food, ninja wire, and various seal tags).

Kosuke arranged for Kojimaru to take lessons from one of the village's best weaponsmiths when he first learned what Kojimaru wanted to do. During those lessons, he was taught the bare basics of blacksmithing (including smelting, forging, and welding) in order to give him a solid grounding in the process of creating weapons (and other items) from metal. He was then taught to make senbon, shuriken, and kunai (the three most common throwing weapons that were used by shinobi everywhere) as well as a small assortment of basic farming equipment (such as shovels). Once he was deemed competent enough at making the three basic shinobi weapons, he was taught how to make ninja wire, lock picks, makibishi, and small shields.

He would not be taught how to make swords, axes, and other large weapons or tools until after his ninth birthday.

Those lessons were then modified and applied to his Kekkei Genkai in order to create usable weapons. Once he succeeded in recreating usable throwing weapons out of wood and ice, Hayama would teach him how to make them sharper using wind natured chakra, how to make them stronger using earth natured chakra, and how to use water natured chakra to eliminate the Hyouton and Mokuton's weakness to fire. Kojimaru would practice creating weapons every chance he got and as soon as he reached the point where he could form a single weapon with a mere though, he began working on creating hoards of them in the shortest amount possible.

It would take Kojimaru nearly a full year before his ice and wood throwing weapons could be used in a fight outside of training. Their use in a fight would soon become both irritating and effective as he aimed, not to kill, but to distract his opponents in order to goad them into leaving themselves open to his teammates and to his tree manipulation attacks. His Mokuton grown weapons in particular could be extremely debilitating when they hit their marks because Kojimaru could make them grow and come alive without needing to be near them due to the fact that they were both created from and saturated in his chakra.

That didn't mean that his wood and ice creations weren't deadly; they were. He was still young enough that the thought of killing his opponents bothered him though. In fact, he still disliked killing animals; even though he willingly hunted small game mammals and birds for food when on missions. The fact that most animals (wild or domesticated) tended to approach him of their own free will except when they simply ignored him (grumpy wild cats not-withstanding) only made him feel worse about killing them for food. Tenzou usually offered to do the hunting because of that; the taller boy looking to spare Kojimaru the pain of killing a helpless animal.

Hayama and Tekuno learning that Kojimaru could command his created wood from a distance in turn led to the creation of specialized splinter bombs towards the end of that eighteen month period. Loosely based off of the standard issue exploding tags and smoke bombs, the splinter bombs were filled with hundreds of tiny splinters that were half the length of sewing needles, sharp on both ends, and slightly barbed to make them harder to remove. The splinters were packed around a small core of gunpowder within the tennis ball sized bomb that, when activated, would expel the needles outwards with a low level explosion.

The splinters were often seen and treated as annoying irritants by their opponents rather than the threat they were. After all, it only took one splinter to mark a target and it didn't matter if it was lodged in skin or fabric. That single splinter could then be used to grow highly effective bindings that were nearly as hard to cut through as standard ninja wire (courtesy of Kojimaru's lessons in making real ninja wire). In that way, a single splinter bomb could, theoretically, take down an entire enemy camp or army with minimal risk; though that tactic didn't always work on higher level shinobi.

As effective as the splinter bombs were, they were not actually a practical device to use in every single fight. Each bomb had to be made by hand, took roughly three months to make, and required insane amounts of chakra because each splinter had to be grown, shaped, and saturated with Kojimaru's chakra. Meaning that creating a large supply of them would likely cripple, if not outright kill, Kojimaru through chakra exhaustion alone. Still, they made an excellent trump card when their team was outnumbered and backed into a corner and he could safely make up to four per year, if he was careful.

About the same time that Hayama and Tekuno learned about Kojimaru's ability to grow his splinters from a distance, both boys discovered that they could merge themselves into both living trees and dead wood. With practice, they would eventually be able to take people with them into the wood by covering their passengers with a thin layer of their chakra. That was also about the time that Hayama learned that Kojimaru's physical stamina and endurance levels were four times higher than he originally believed they were due to his immense chakra reserves and his internal healing ability.

That was something that had irked the Jounin when he first discovered it; if only because Kojimaru had been holding himself back in order to not outshine or outpace Tenzou. The only reason Kojimaru didn't get into any serious trouble over that was because he'd never approached their training or their missions half-assed; he'd just hid his full potential from Hayama for well over a year after they'd become a team. There was also the fact that hiding his true stamina had prevented their sensei from accidentally pushing Kojimaru too hard, too soon while he was still so young.

By the time a full eighteen months had come and gone, Team Fourteen had become a well oiled machine; each member of the small squad able to perform their assigned duties in their sleep. The children (and they were very much still children despite their rank and skills) still had a long ways to go before they would be considered elite shinobi but they were well on the road to becoming formidable shinobi. Their reputations would only continue to grow before the end of the war, though they would never become as well known as the likes of Namikaze Minato or Hatake Kakashi.

* * *

_May 28, 0288 AtD, 8:15 AM  
Konohagakure no Sato, Hi no Kuni_

Kojimaru launched himself off of the last rooftop on the street with a loud whoop and a laugh that drew nearly every eye in the immediate area upwards as the seven and a half year old dropped like a rock from above. A second whoop followed as Tenzou threw himself from the rooftops next and the pedestrians all rolled their eyes as they finally noted the blue headbands and metal plates secured around both boys' foreheads; crazy ninjas. Kojimaru landed with catlike grace before he dashed forward to where Hayama-sensei and Tekuno were waiting for them by the gate with Tenzou following along a heartbeat later.

"One of these days, the two of you are going to give one of the civilians a heart attack if you keep flinging yourself off of the buildings like that," Tekuno stated in an exasperated tone as he shook his head.

"They should be used to it; all of the shinobi do it," Tenzou quipped as he skidded to a stop nearly on top of Kojimaru.

"Yes, but you two are the only ones that draw their attention to it because for some reason your voices grow louder the moment your feet leave the ground," Hayama deadpanned as he gave the two boys an exasperated look.

"That's because it's fun to chase the wind," Kojimaru solemnly stated before he burst into a round of giggles. "It's almost like flying."

"Ah, so we finally have an explanation as to why you are always caught up in Hayama-sensei's wind attacks during our training sessions," Aoba teased as he walked up behind the two younger boys and gave them both a noogie. "You let him hit you with a blast of wind because you love flying."

"Absolutely! And it's the same reason I let you throw me around during our spars."

"Hayama-sensei, I believe Kojimaru-kun is past due for a thorough mental evaluation. He is obviously delusional if he thinks that the only reason I toss him around is because he allows me to catch him during our spars."

Hayama just shook his head and snorted before he grew serious and asked, "Are the three of you ready to go?"

"Hai, sensei," all three Chuunin replied in unison as all signs of playfulness vanished in an instant.

"Good, let's get moving."

The two adults and three children walked out the gates just seconds later and immediately took to the trees as they automatically shifted into a diamond formation with Tenzou on point, Aoba at the rear, Kojimaru in the very center, and Hayama and Tekuno at either side. As they traveled swiftly and silently through the trees in a southwesterly direction, all five shinobi paid close attention to their surroundings; their eyes constantly searching for obstacles, navigational landmarks, and potential threats.

It would take the five of them two and a half days to reach the southernmost shinobi outpost on the border between Hi no Kuni and Kawa no Kuni. They would stay just long enough to deliver a handful of storage scrolls (holding letters from the loved ones of the shinobi posted there, fresh supplies that could not be found or bought from nearby villages, and the latest orders from the Hokage) and collect the sealed reports that needed to be handed back to the Hokage and return letters to friends and loved ones. Team Fourteen would then work their way north along the border to the next outpost (which was only a two hour run from the first one).

They would hit all twenty of the outposts stationed along the Kawa no Kuni border over a period of five days before they rested overnight at the twentieth outpost. The team would leave just before dawn the next morning and spend the day checking in at the three of the outposts that sat along the Hi no Kuni and Sawa no Kuni border. A full day of rest would be spent at that final outpost to give the three Chuunin time to recover from their grueling journey along southern and southeastern borders of Hi no Kuni. Team Fourteen would then once again set out before dawn on the seventh of June to make their way back to Konoha with the reports they had collected from the various outposts.

The five of them had barely been on the move for three hours when they came across a severely injured Konoha Chuunin. It was quite obvious from the teen's appearance that he had been tortured and left for dead; what little skin they could see that wasn't covered in burn marks or infected lash marks was covered in a mottled collection of old and new bruises and made it near impossible to identify the teen. Tekuno rushed to the teen's side to check for signs of life and check for hidden traps while Hayama signaled for Aoba to secure the immediate area before the Jounin-teichou took Kojimaru and Tenzou with him to search for any signs of the teen's torturers by following the teen's back trail (and to keep them from dwelling on the injured Chuunin's condition – but they didn't know that).

Tenzou would be the first one to spot the day old tracks of a small group of Iwa shinobi near the end of the trail; the soles of the other village's shinobi sandals leaving a distinct pattern behind due to the circular treads that were designed to grip rock (Tsuchi no Kuni filled with giant rock and stone formations, lots of dirt, and very little vegetation). Shortly after that discovery, they would find the abandoned base camp that the enemy had used roughly an hour's travel from where the injured teen had been found. Exploration of the base involved clones in case of traps before Hayama set the boys to scouting the edge of the camp.

Kojimaru would have the misfortune of being the one to stumble upon the remains of the teen's teammates just a short ways away from the earthen shelter that was the abandoned base; literally. And while the not quite eight year old had been desensitized to death long before he finished the Academy, that didn't mean he was unaffected by the brutalized remains of the two teens.

He'd been searching the perimeter of the camp for tracks that might belong to the injured Chuunin's missing teammates when he lost his footing on a rock buried beneath a loose patch of dirt. Unprepared for hidden rock shifting out from under his feet without warning, he tripped over his feet as he overcompensated for the loss of balance and landed face to face with one of the dead teens. It was not a pleasant experience by any stretch of the imagination. He didn't scream like a sissy or bawl like a baby but he did give a soft, sharp cry of distress the moment the smell hit him and he realized what he was seeing half buried in the ground between the roots of a knarled oak tree.

"Are you alright, Kojimaru?" Hayama inquired as he deftly picked the frozen Chuunin up by the back of his shirt and set him back on his feet a few yards away from the poorly buried bodies; the Jounin had rushed to his side the moment he heard him cry out. Kojimaru jerkily nodded an affirmative as his eyes remained fixed on the face of the dead teen he'd nearly kissed when he'd fallen. Hayama eyed him critically for a moment before he instructed, "Alright, go stand watch with Tenzou while I take care of this."

Kojimaru nodded again and tore his eyes away from the dead body as he hurried away from the crude grave while suppressing the urge he felt to empty his stomach. Tenzou gripped his arm in a silent offer of comfort the moment he reached his friend's side and Kojimaru gave him a wane smile that was more of a grimace before he turned his attention to the forest and opened his senses to the world around him. He gained another small measure of comfort when he felt the forest's soothing presence wash over him and heard nothing but the sounds of nature.

Ten minutes later, the quiet poof of two storage seals being activated sounded one right after another just before Hayama ordered, "We're done here; let's head back to others. Keep your eyes and ears open for any sign of the enemy; now is not the time to grow careless."

"Hai, sensei," Tenzou replied while Kojimaru just nodded yet again; the artificial redhead sinking into one of his familiar silences due to his lingering discomfort over coming face to face with the dead.

The three of them took to the trees and circled wide in order to avoid any potential ambushes that might have been set up along their original path (on the off chance that there were Iwa shinobi still in the area). They made it back to the others without incident and Hayama flared his chakra sharply three times in rapid succession to let the others know they had returned unharmed and un-pursued. Tekuno flared his chakra twice in reply; an indication that both he and Aoba were also unharmed and that their current position was uncompromised.

The trio would drop out of the trees a moment later and approach the others on foot at that point. Kojimaru and Tenzou automatically gravitated towards Aoba while Hayama went to speak with Tekuno and check on the status of the first teen they had found.

"Did you find anything?" Aoba asked in a low voice that wouldn't travel far.

"Hai," Tenzou replied in kind as he shot Kojimaru a worried glance. "We found a hastily abandoned Iwa camp not far from here."

"Did you find his missing teammates?"

Kojimaru flinched sharply and half turned away from his teammates in response to the question. The diminutive Chuunin shifted uncomfortably when he felt Tenzou's concerned gaze fall on him as a result. He shrugged his shoulders a heartbeat later in response to the unspoken question he could see in Tenzou's eyes and focused his attention on the forest again as he half listened to Tenzou answer the question.

"Yeah, I think Kojimaru did."

"Were they…?"

"Sensei sealed whoever it was that Kojimaru found into a pair of black scrolls."

"Oh."

An uncomfortable silence fell over the three Chuunin at that point and Kojimaru felt his stomach twist again as he recalled the putrid scent that had clung to the dead teen he'd practically landed on. He then shivered and half curled in on himself as his mind traitorously painted the memory of the dead Chuunin with the faces of his teammates. It took a supreme effort on Kojimaru's part not to give into the urge to puke his guts out in response to the waking nightmare.

He wasn't stupid and he was not some naïve little Genin fresh out of the Academy; he knew it just as easily could have been his team that had been captured and tortured. There had been a number of close calls where it had nearly been his team in that position. The only reason they hadn't ended up in that position was due to sheer luck and the hidden trump cards that were his and Tenzou's Kekkei Genkai. That knowledge only made Kojimaru feel even sicker; his very soul rebelling against the mere thought that he owed his life to Orochimaru's cruelty.

"We don't owe him anything," Tenzou murmured as he reached out to touch Kojimaru's elbow; his best friend knowing him well enough to quickly and easily trace the direction Kojimaru's thoughts had taken. "He didn't make us. He only hurt us."

Kojimaru relaxed a bit and briefly leaned against his friend in silent thanks before he straightened up and brought his skittering emotions back under control. Equilibrium found (tenuous though it was), Kojimaru once more focused his attention on the mission; which now included protecting their injured comrade and keeping an eye out for the teen's torturers. They couldn't afford to be careless; not when they held the injured teen's life in their hands on top of the twenty-three storage scrolls containing important reports from the outposts that they had visited during the course of their mission.

Normally, a different team would be dispatched to each outpost in order to avoid painting a huge target on any one team but the number of qualified, able-bodied teams that had been available to undertake those missions had been drastically reduced over the course of the last three years. There was also the fact that most of their forces were tied up in keeping the main Iwa force from sweeping through Hi no Kuni unopposed. Team Fourteen was actually one of seven teams that ran back and forth between the outposts and the village on a regular basis when they weren't hunting down specific targets to capture.

In fact, the injured teen they had stumbled upon was had been a member of one of the other six teams; a team that had obviously run out of luck on their latest mission. Meaning that there was a high likelihood that any reports they had been carrying at the time they'd been ambushed were in the hands of the enemy and that they had potentially spilled any and all information they had known in regards to the war, the position of the outposts, troop movements, and Konoha's defenses. That realization was enough to make Kojimaru shiver; many lives and possibly the entire war could be lost if the enemy had gotten their hands on any sensitive information.

"Tenzou, can I get you to grow us a sturdy stretcher just long and wide enough to hold the injured teen?" Hayama asked at that moment, his voice cutting through Kojimaru's worry like a hot knife through butter.

"Hai, sensei," Tenzou agreed as he hurried forward to comply with the request after shooting another concerned look in Kojimaru's direction.

"Thank you, Tenzou-kun," Hayama replied before he turned to Kojimaru and beckoned him forward with one hand while stating, "Kojimaru-kun, I need you to come here for a moment."

The soon to be eight year old didn't hesitate to move forward as he silently held his sensei's gaze while waiting for the Jounin to speak. To his surprise, Hayama lifted the messenger bag holding all of the outpost reports and the two black scrolls containing the dead bodies they'd found off of his shoulder and settled it over Kojimaru's chest before he crouched down so that he was at eye level with the diminutive Chuunin.

"We are nearly two days' travel out from Konoha and even if it was possible to move the injured teen, our pace would be drastically reduced due to the extent of his injuries. We need to take him to the nearest outpost in order to get him the medical help he needs or he is going to die and we will never find out what happened to his team and the reports they were collecting from the other outposts. The problem is that we also need to get the reports that we collected and the news that one of the other collection teams had been captured and interrogated back to the Hokage as fast as humanly possible to prevent the enemy from using any of the information that they may have gleaned from Team Taka to their advantage."

"Out of everyone on the team, you have the best chance of getting to the village in the shortest amount of time possible due to your above average stamina, high chakra reserves, and healing ability. You are also the member of the team that is most at home in the forest and I know that I can trust you not to get lost amongst the trees the moment you leave the road. If there was any other option I could take that would both keep us all together and get the job done, I would not ask this of you but we don't have the time to find an alternative right now."

"Sensei…?" Kojimaru asked in confusion as he automatically reached up to clutch the strap of the messenger bag.

Hayama closed his eyes for a moment before he reopened them to search Kojimaru's eyes intently before he replied, "I need you to be brave, Kojimaru. I need you to run straight to the village as fast as you can without stopping to rest if at all possible. Can you do that for me? Can you put aside your fear and hurry back to Konoha alone in order to warn the Hokage about the misfortune that befell Team Taka?"

Kojimaru swallowed thickly as his eyes grew so wide it felt like they might fall out. He then clenched his jaw and snuck a quick look at an equally wide eyed and worried Tenzou (who had overheard Hayama's words and request). He then met his sensei's gaze once more and nodded.

"Thank you, Kojimaru," Hayama murmured as he stood up and dropped one hand on Kojimaru's head. "Take a moment to check your supplies before you head out." The Jounin's hand on Kojimaru's head trembled slightly before he let his hand drop away. "Be safe, Kojimaru-kun."

"Ha…hai, sensei."

Kojimaru's hands shook slightly as he quickly checked his utility pouch, shuriken holder, and pockets to make certain that he still had all of his supplies. He then double checked to make certain the top flap of the messenger bag had been securely fastened so that he wouldn't lose any of the reports. Once done, he glanced up and over to meet Tenzou's gaze for a moment before he swung around to glance in Aoba's direction. The seal hiding his eyes briefly faltered in response to his churning emotions before he turned his back on his team at that point and took off towards Konoha at a sprint.

He'd barely gone ten yards before he took to the trees where he immediately moved up into the higher, flimsier branches where it would be harder for grown men to follow him. It also allowed him a clearer view of the sky so that he could use the stars and the sun as a guide. Not that he really needed a guide seeing as how a part of him was so intertwined with the forest that he instinctively knew which way was home no matter where he was within Hi no Kuni. However, it gave the child soldier a small measure of comfort to use the skills that his godfather had taught him over the past four years.

As the sun began sinking towards the horizon, Kojimaru pushed his body to move faster as he did his best to ignore the fact that he was completely alone. At the same time, he pushed his senses out as far as he could; straining both his eyes and ears in order to avoid potential threats. All around him, the trees stirred restlessly; as if they could sense his disquiet, desperation, and determination through the strange yet comforting connection he shared with them.

All through the night, Kojimaru ran hard and fast; his little legs launching him from the branches time and time again while his corrupted chakra constantly circulated through his body to reduce his fatigue and muscle strain. He would cut through the camps of more than one team of shinobi (both friendly and hostile) but few of them would ever take notice of his passing. The wind and the trees masking his presence from all but the most accomplished sensor.

Kojimaru never once considered stopping or going around any of the camps he passed through; his orders had been to run straight to the village and that was what he was going to do. He didn't even bother to slow down long enough to grab something to eat or drink from his supplies. That was probably a good thing, though; since it meant he also wouldn't have to stop to answer the call of nature.

Fourteen and a half hours after parting from his team, Kojimaru threw himself from the uppermost branches of the last tree within ten yards of Konoha's main gate. He nearly ended up kissing the ground as he stumbled upon landing on the unforgiving hard packed dirt road that led into the village after having spent more than half a day moving through the flexible tree branches of the surrounding forest. Shaking off his less than graceful landing, Kojimaru resumed his full out sprint at the same time as he flared his chakra in the required pattern to identify himself as both a Konoha shinobi and as the carrier of critical information.

The gate guard flared his chakra once in acknowledgement and Kojimaru flew through the gates without a word. His chosen path would soon take him up to the rooftops in order to avoid getting caught in the crowds that were moving through the streets of Konoha. He quickly crossed the length of Konoha and began flaring his chakra once more as he launched himself off the roofs and over top of the protective curtain wall that surrounded the Hokage's tower in order to prevent his approach from being mistaken as an assassination attempt by the ANBU Guards on duty.

His feet barely touched the ground as he crossed the courtyard before he was racing up the side of the building as he aimed straight for the window to the Hokage's office. Just before he would have crashed through the glass, the Hokage himself opened the window to let him in and Kojimaru dove through the open space headfirst. The almost eight year old Chuunin curled into ball just before he hit the floor rolling and tumbled to stop up against the Hokage's desk. Stunned and seeing stars due to his reckless entrance, Kojimaru simply closed his eyes and panted as he sat upside-down and half propped up against the desk with his legs folded over his head and his chin pressed uncomfortably into his chest.

Once he was no longer quite so dizzy, Kojimaru rolled over and hauled himself to his feet using the Hokage's desk while pulling off the messenger bag at the same time. He then unceremoniously dumped the sealed bag on the desk (knocking off a large stack of paperwork) and drew a deep breath before he blurted out, "Chuunin Kojimaru from Team Fourteen reporting in with an urgent message from the borders. After successfully completing our mission to collect the reports from those outposts stationed along the borders of Kawa no Kuni and Sawa no Kuni, Team Fourteen stumbled upon the only surviving member of Team Taka."

"The barely identifiable Chuunin was in critical condition and covered in burns, lacerations, and bruises that were consistent with the injuries inflicted through systematic torture. Team Fourteen split up directly after finding the teen; half of the team tending to the dying teen and the other half to search for the teen's teammates and their attackers. I was part of the search party and after following the Chuunin's back trail, we located evidence that he'd been a prisoner of an Iwa patrol in the form of an abandoned Iwa camp and several tracks. The bodies of two teens that were identified as the Chuunin's teammates were found half buried and already in an advanced state of decay just outside of the camp."

"No trace of the fourth member assigned to the team was found nor were we able to recover any reports the team had collected prior to their being captured. Hayama-sensei identified and sealed the two corpses and our group returned to the others at that point. After determining that the Chuunin's injuries were too severe to rush him back to Konoha, Hayama-sensei made the decision to head to the nearest outpost in search of medical aide for the Chuunin and sent me to deliver the reports we'd collected over the course of our mission and to warn you of Team Taka's fate."

"Where was the Chuunin found?" the Hokage demanded even as he sent two of his ANBU guards rushing from the room to gather reinforcements and a couple of other key individuals.

"Three hours out from the northernmost outpost on the Hi no Kuni and Sawa no Kuni border. The Iwa camp was roughly an hour's walk directly to the east of that location. The Chuunin's trail leading towards the Iwa Camp was over eighteen hours old and the tracks found in and around the base indicated that it had been abandoned for at least twenty-four hours before we arrived."

"How long ago did you part company with the rest of your team?"

"Approximately fifteen hours ago, Hokage-sama; Hayama-sensei ordered me not to stop for anything and to get here as fast as I could," Kojimaru answered as he swayed on his feet a bit as exhaustion began creeping up on him.

"Sit down," the Sandaime ordered as he walked around his desk and steered Kojimaru to the couch at the back of the office. "Do you have any protein bars or travel rations on you?" Kojimaru numbly nodded as he gratefully sank into the couch's soft cushions; his entire body now tingling as his chakra network alerted him to the fact that his reserves had been dangerously depleted during his frantic all night flight. "Then I want you to eat a couple of them and sip some water while I send for a medic to check you over."

"Hai, Hokage-sama," Kojimaru automatically murmured in reply as he slumped over and passed out before he could comply with the order; the child no longer able to stay awake now that he'd delivered his message as ordered.

* * *

**Translations:** Japanese to English

Hai – yes  
Hi no Kuni – Fire Country  
Kawa no Kuni – River Country (Country that stands as a buffer between Fire and Wind Countries)  
Makibishi – caltrops (small spiked devices designed to hinder foot soldiers and horses)  
Sawa no Kuni – Swamp Country (randomly selected country for Amegakure to be located)  
Taka – Hawk

* * *

**11-14-15:** _Minor edits made to chapter to fix spelling/grammar mistakes and removed unnecessary author's notes._


	11. The War

**Disclaimer:** _All HP characters are the property of JKR, the WB, and respective publishing companies and all Naruto characters are the property of Masashi Kishimoto. This is nothing more than a simple FanFiction that I have written. I have made no money from this or any of the other stories I have posted on this or other sites._

**Warnings:** _Mild to moderate violence, character death, alternate universe (i.e. kiss canon goodbye), OCC behaviors and personalities, a number of original characters and obscure canon characters to flesh out family trees, random chosen last names to give a number of characters surnames, and who knows what else._

**AN:** _This story is self-beta'd; so there may be occasional grammatical or spelling errors that crop up every now and then and for those I apologize in advance._

* * *

Chapter Eleven: The War

_June 08, 0288 AtD, 8:18 AM  
Konohagakure no Sato, Hi no Kuni_

Hiruzen gently arranged the exhausted child on his couch as he felt a combination of guilt and pride well up inside of him. He felt guilty that such a young child had pushed himself beyond his limits just to complete a mission and at the same time he was so very proud of the child for his bravery and skill in evading enemies and other threats alone just to bring him an urgent report. It was rare to see the Will of Fire burn so brightly in one so young.

He only prayed that the war would not snuff out that bright light (and the dozen others like it) least Konoha's future dim and fade into nothingness. Sighing softly, Hiruzen gently brushed the child's hair out of his face and checked the boy for any serious injuries before he rose to his feet and stuck his head out of the office in order to have his secretary send for a medic. He then made his way to his desk, picked up the messenger bag the child had delivered, unlocked the seal by smearing a generous drop of blood across the paper tag securing the flap shut, and dumped the contents out on his desk.

The moment he caught sight of the two black scrolls amidst the standard red and green scrolls used for reports, Hiruzen felt the weight of his office bearing down on him once more as he read the hastily scrawled names etched on the outside of the scrolls. He had feared that Team Taka had been lost when the four man cell had gone missing between one outpost and another on their most recent circuit of the borders. Their disappearance had weighed heavily on the Sandaime and the confirmation of his worst fears only made him ache for the lives that had been lost since Iwa had declared war on Konoha.

Team Taka had been one of the more seasoned collection teams and their assigned outposts were those along the Na no Kuni and Tani no Kuni borders because those two countries in turn bordered Tsuchi no Kuni and were the portals through which Iwa shinobi typically entered Hi no Kuni. The only reason they didn't attempt to also enter through Sawa no Kuni was strictly because Sanshouo no Hanzou did not tolerate trespassers. It was the same reason why Hiruzen didn't bother sending any of his shinobi through Sawa no Kuni; one war with Hanzou was more than enough.

Shoving his memories and his regret to the back of his mind, Hiruzen collected the pair of black scrolls and set them off to one side. He then began the tedious process of unsealing the many reports that had been collected and skimmed each one of them while he waited for those he had sent for to arrive. He had managed to sort through half of the reports when his was pulled from the paperwork by a familiar disgruntled voice.

"Why is there a snot-nosed gaki snoring on your couch, Hiruzen?"

"Because he passed out on me the moment he finished giving me his initial report. And that was after he'd crossed the distance between Konoha and Na no Kuni's border in less than fifteen hours, Kasai," Hiruzen replied without looking up at the masked ANBU Commander. "I've already sent for a medic to come check on him and confirm that he isn't going to suffer any permanent damage as a result of pushing himself past his limits."

"So, that was the gaki that had the gate guards all up in arms when he sped through the gate after using the emergency code?"

"I would imagine so; he rather brazenly threw himself into my office through the window after announcing himself to the Tower's Gate Watch as well. His crash landing was rather memorable. I can't recall ever seeing a Chuunin use my desk to halt their forward momentum before. I'd almost feared he'd snapped his own neck due to the position he ended up in."

"What news did he bring you that was so urgent he couldn't even bother to properly identify himself at the gate? And where is the rest of his team? Why weren't they with him? Were they ambushed?"

"His team stumbled upon the sole surviving member of Team Taka. The initial evidence indicates that the three youngest members of the team were held captive and tortured for information by a group of Iwa Nin from the moment that they had disappeared at the end of last month. Jounin Hayama and the rest of Team Fourteen remained with the surviving Chuunin in order to seek medical care for the teen at the nearest outpost while sending Kojimaru-kun back to the village to report on the situation. He also brought with him the outpost reports his team had collected during their mission and the bodies of the two dead Chuunin that were uncovered outside of an abandoned Iwa campsite inside of Hi no Kuni."

"Chikushou, Team Taka had a considerable amount of information on the locations of every last one of our outposts, the positions of our forward troops, and the names and locations of any number of key individuals," Kasai cursed grimly as the current generation of Team Ino-Shika-Cho entered the room alongside of Team Minato, a vivacious redhead by the name of Uzumaki Kushina, two squads of masked ANBU, another two Jounin led Chuunin teams, a medic whose name escaped him at the moment, and a handful of his advisors.

"I've already called for a number of those elite squads that are in the village so that I can send them out to spread the word of a possible compromise in our security. I also plan to send a retrieval team to fetch the rest of Team Fourteen and the teen they stumbled upon. I do not know if the teen will have survived; Kojimaru indicated that his injuries were critical and that moving him would be a delicate matter."

"What happened to Team Fourteen?" Shikaku demanded with a slight frown as his eyes searched the room before falling on the unconscious redhead sprawled on Hiruzen's couch. "What happened to Kojimaru-kun? Where is the rest of his team?"

"He exhausted himself to bring me urgent news from the border," Hiruzen answered before he addressed the medic. "I believe the child is unharmed aside from a severe case of physical and chakra exhaustion as I found no visible sign of any injury."

"Did you wish for me to treat him here or may I transport him to the hospital so that I can give him a full evaluation?"

"I would prefer for you to treat him here in the event that we need time sensitive information or answers that only he can provide. However, if you find any sign of a serious or life threatening injury while scanning him, then you have my permission to transfer him to the hospital immediately."

"Wakarimasu, Hokage-sama."

"What is the gaki's surname?" Kushina demanded as she stared intently at the redhead child.

"Unknown; his parents were killed by bandits when he was three. He was brought to the village not long after that by his godfather, Maruboshi Kosuke. Why do you ask?" Hiruzen answered as frowned at the volatile kunoichi.

"Even exhausted as he is, I can tell that the gaki has some rather impressive chakra reserves for such a little thing, dattebane," Kushina replied as she moved up to the couch and leaned down to finger the child's red hair. "And he has red hair. Those are two very prominent traits of the Uzumaki Clan and I know that those members of my clan that survived the fall of Uzushio scattered themselves in order to better hide from their enemies."

"The little gaichuu is no Uzumaki; he is too even tempered," Kasai interjected with in a dry tone.

"Oh, I don't know, Kasai; Kojimaru's earlier entrance was quite spectacular and his shinobi file contained a long list of impressive pranks that he pulled off during the four terms that he attended the Academy. He also tends to get very angry if any one picks on his lack of height or insults his friends and teammates."

"Half of those pranks were actually instigated by the gaki's teammate," Kasai countered and Hiruzen could practically feel the man's growing annoyance. "Besides, the gaki's hair is the wrong color red and his eyes are the wrong color blue and there are a number of Suna Clans that also have red hair."

"Why is it such a big deal if the kid's an Uzumaki?" Uchiha Obito, one of Namikaze Minato's students, asked as he tried to peek around the medic who was currently scanning the child for internal injuries.

"Because I'm an Uzumaki!" Kushina roared as she clobbered the tactless pre-teen over the head.

"Dobe," Hatake Kakashi, another one of Minato's students, grunted as he side-stepped out of the way of his now flailing teammate.

"Shut up, teme!"

"Knock it off, both of you; now is not the time," Minato ordered in a stern tone laced with exasperation that indicated the Jounin was long used to his two students fighting amongst themselves.

"We weren't doin' nuffin'," Kojimaru unexpectedly grumbled in response to the order as he twisted around and curled his arms around one of the couch cushions. "You can't pin that bucket of angry fire-ants that you walked into on me 'n' Tenzou, Nam'kaze-san. S'not our fault that you walked face first into the prank we set up for the teme that had stolen my tea."

There was a brief moment of silence before several individuals burst out laughing at Minato's expense as the blond began growling under his breath in response to the sleepy confession that Kojimaru had just given; Hiruzen included as he well remembered the day that Minato had walked into his office for a meeting covered from head to toe in fresh ant bites.

"I'm going to strip the little brats bare, bath them in honey, and bury them up to their necks in an anthill just as soon as the gaki's partner in crime returns to the village," Minato swore as a vein on the side of his forehead began throbbing even as the child's breathing evened out; an indication that he had sank back into a deeper sleep once more.

"Yes, well as entertaining as it is to learn that you were bested by a pair of seven year olds; we really don't have time for this right now," Hiruzen intoned as he recalled the reason why he'd called everyone to his office upon hearing mention of the popular and often rather painful torture technique (depending on the type of ants living in said ant hill) that was still used in Sunagakure. "I summoned you here because Kojimaru-kun brought us grave word from the borders; Team Taka's disappearance has been confirmed to be the work of a group of Iwa shinobi. Two members of the team have been confirmed dead, another is presumed dead – his body unaccounted for, and the final member is in critical condition."

"Kuso," several of the Jounin present swore as they immediately understood the implications.

"My sentiments exactly," Hiruzen gravely agreed. "We will need to move quickly in order to mitigate any potential damage that can be done with the information that was potentially extracted from Team Taka and the reports that they were carrying at the time of their disappearance. Minato, I want you and your team to head to the border and meet up with the rest of Team Fourteen and the hopefully still surviving member of Team Taka in their care."

"Is the child going to be up to escorting us to the last place he saw his teammates?" Minato inquired with more than a little concern as he cast a quick glance in said child's direction (his annoyance over the earlier prank not blinding him to the fact that the kid was still just a kid).

"No, the child's reserves are dangerously low," the medic answered in Hiruzen's place. "I found no sign of any physical injuries but I doubt he'll be waking up any time soon due to the severity of his exhaustion."

"I suspected as much; given the fact that the child pushed himself to his limits on his mad dash to Konoha from the border."

"Oh…? How long did it take him?" Kushina asked curiously; the kunoichi looking to find out if the child had beaten her record for the shortest recorded journey time between the village and the eastern borders.

"Approximately fourteen and a half hours without a single rest stop," Hiruzen replied as he folded his hands together and propped his elbows on his desk as he watched the medic withdraw from the room. "I suspect that it'll be at least another year or two before he threatens your record of twelve hours and fifteen minutes, Kushina."

Kushina snorted in amusement as she retorted, "I guess I'll just have to work harder to beat my own record before the adorable little tyke beats me, dattebane. Anyway, what do you need me to do?"

"I need you back on the front lines to deflect attention away from our main troops in order to buy us some time to move people around in order to negate any advantage that Iwa potentially now has over us. With luck, the group that captured Team Taka will think any information that they extracted from their prisoners was outdated or nothing but false leads at that point."

"The rest of you will need to carry new instructions to the outposts and the front line to get them moving and warn them of potential ambushes. I will have everything prepared within the next thirty minutes so that you can be on your way before the hour is out. Are there any questions? No? Then you are dismissed so that you can prepare yourselves. Minato; you'll need to stick around for a moment if you want information on Team Fourteen's last known location."

"Go pack for a two week mission and meet me at the front gate in a half an hour," Minato ordered as he made shooing motions at his students. "And, Obito, don't stop to help any old ladies or fetch any cats out of a tree; lives are at stake and we won't have time for any tomfoolery."

"Hai, sensei," Obito replied with a slightly petulant tone in response to the public (if mild) chastisement.

"Minato; you and I will have words about you hiding the knowledge about the possible existence of a potential relative of mine from me the next time we're both in the village," Kushina threatened darkly before she stalked out of the room in the wake of the three pre-teens; leaving only a handful of individuals inside of the office.

"He's not an Uzumaki!" Kasai barked irritably after her at the same time as Minato cried, "I never saw the kid's face before today or I would have strung him up by his ears the day I got caught in his prank trap!"

Hiruzen wondered who put a burr up Torifu's ass and why his old friend was so adamant that Kushina not see the child as a distant relative. He had the vague feeling that he was missing something obvious before he pushed the masked man's behavior to the back of his mind as he focused on more important matters. Such as salvaging the current situation least Iwa crush Konoha.

"Kojimaru informed me that their team was roughly three hours travel from Outpost Eighty-Seven when they found the injured member of Team Taka. The Iwa camp where the two dead Chuunin were found was an hour's walk directly east of that location and there were obvious signs that the sole survivor dragged himself out of that camp before he collapsed in the area where he was found. The teen's trail was at least eighteen hours old at the time of discovery and the camp itself had been abandoned for roughly twenty-four hours."

"So, basically, a group of Iwa shinobi had Team Taka and worked them over for nearly two weeks," Minato deduced with a grimace. "Do we have an estimated time of death for the dead?"

"No, I still have their scrolls with me but Kojimaru-kun said the bodies were partially decomposed; an indication that they have probably been dead for quite some time."

"That also increases the chances that they died before they were forced to give up too many secrets," Shikarou drawled from where he was propped up against the wall.

"True but it is better to expect and plan for the worst case scenario than get caught with our pants down," Kasai retorted as he made his way over to Kojimaru and crouched down to inspect the child's face.

"That's also assuming that the missing member of the team is actually dead and not still in the hands of their captors," Hiruzen added tiredly before he turned his attention to Shikarou's teammate. "Inohiko, will you be able to view the child's memories of the past twenty-four hours now or will you need to wait until he wakes up?"

"It would be best to view them now, while he is still sleeping," Shikarou interjected with a frown. "Shikaku was there the last time Inoichi-kun mind-walked through the child's memories after a mission when the child revealed that he relives the memories as they are viewed. If I recall correctly, my nephew also stated that Inoichi later confessed that the child had far more control over his mind than expected for a child his age."

"I recall having a similar conversation with my son," Inohiko added off-handedly as he knelt beside the couch and placed a hand on the child's forehead before activating the jutsu that would allow him to slip into the child's mind.

Hiruzen watched for a moment before he began cleaning up the stack of paperwork that Kojimaru had accidentally knocked over when he first arrived. He then sat down to finish skimming through the outpost reports; handing the reports over to Shikarou as soon as he finished skimming them so that his Chief Strategist could help him come up with a way to salvage the mess created by the capture of Team Taka. Kasai eventually gravitated towards the pair in order to add his two cents as well, though the masked shinobi continuously cast glances towards the child on the couch.

"You seem overly distracted, Kasai; is there a problem?" Hiruzen asked after he caught the man glancing towards Kojimaru for the seventh time in ten minutes.

"Ask me again in seven years," Kasai replied as he turned his back on the pair by the couch.

"Hnn," Hiruzen grunted in annoyance over the fact that Kasai was being intentionally evasive; a clear indication that there was definitely something going on.

Something important and Hiruzen couldn't help but feel as if he should already know what. It also wasn't like his old friend to make allusions to a far distant future that Hiruzen may or may not survive to see; a shinobi's life was fraught with danger and death and a Kage's life could be ended just as easily as a Genin's under the right conditions. Hiruzen let out a huff of exasperation before he refocused his attention on the reports and the discussion on the current war strategy.

It would be two days before Kojimaru woke up and another four days before his team returned to the village alongside of the Chuunin they had rescued. Those four days were pure torture for the young Chuunin; it being the longest time he'd been separated from Tenzou since they had become friends four years earlier. He was more than a little upset with the Hokage for not allowing him to leave the village in order to rejoin his team as quickly as possible. As soon as his team did appear, Kojimaru's bad mood evaporated after he made certain that both Aoba and Tenzou had made it back to the village unscathed.

* * *

_June 11, 0288 AtD through December 31, 0290 AtD  
Konohagakure no Sato, Hi no Kuni_

The next two years would become a blur of missions, fights, and training for Team Fourteen.

The number of missions that Team Fourteen were sent on continued to increase as they picked up those missions that normally would have gone to an older team as the casualties of war continued to grow. The number of enemy shinobi that they faced on a given mission continued to increase as well when both Kumogakure and Sunagakure were drawn into the war as allies of Iwa and Konoha respectively. Kirigakure would inevitably be drawn into the war as well but they played both sides; the Mizukage seeking to regain the power that their village had lost during the Second Great Shinobi War.

More and more often now, Team Fourteen was coming home injured at the end of a mission as both sides of the war grew more desperate to gain the upper hand. Kojimaru hated the fact that his teammates were starting to collect scars while he walked away from their battles unmarred and virtually unhurt since his injuries usually healed rapidly except when he was suffering from chakra exhaustion. Not even Tenzou was quite as lucky when it came to injuries, since the amount of scarring he acquired from injuries was only reduced and not prevented entirely.

Aoba and Tenzou usually cheered Kojimaru up when he grew depressed about their scars by teasing him about being the pretty boy on the team. They occasionally went so far as to declare him the unofficial kunoichi of their team; a comment that always sparked some serious prank wars between the three boys whenever they were in the village. The prank wars served to relieve the tension and stress that the ongoing war piled onto their team in addition to cheering up the artificial redhead. They also served as a form of training since it forced them to plan on their feet, helped to increase their situational awareness, and nurtured their creativity.

Due to the increase in injuries that the team acquired during missions, Hayama and Tekuno increased the level of their training. Their elemental training was taken to next level as they finally mastered changing the nature of their chakra into their individual elements (Tenzou and Kojimaru's Kekkei Genkai not counting). That basically meant that they were now being taught how to use their affinities to increase the effectiveness of their elemental jutsu as well as increasing their repertoire of elemental based ninjutsu attacks.

In an odd role reversal, Tenzou's ninjutsu arsenal became heavy on defense while Kojimaru's ninjutsu were mostly offensive in nature. The reason for that was due to Kojimaru's natural wind affinity (which was still far stronger than his earth or water affinity) and Tenzou's natural earth affinity; wind being ideal for offensive attacks while earth was more suited for defense. Kojimaru still learned the same defensive doton based jutsu as Tenzou; he just didn't feel quite as comfortable using them as Tenzou did and therefore would not master them as quickly or as thoroughly as his friend.

Aoba's ninjutsu arsenal was split evenly between offense and distraction as he learned a handful of genjutsu on top of the katon jutsu that he was taught. His role in an all out ninjutsu battle was relegated to offensive support and he was most often paired with Kojimaru or Hayama who would then use collaboration ninjutsu to enhance Aoba's fire attacks using their wind affinities. The results tended to be rather explosive and extensive; wiping out large swaths of terrain (much to Kojimaru's everlasting dismay) and mowing down enemies that weren't quick enough to escape.

The Mokuton's ability to grow trees in any condition meant that their team didn't permanently destroy the environment during those battles where they were forced to pull out their more destructive attacks just to survive. Growing trees was also one of two facets of the Mokuton that Tenzou and Kojimaru could both perform without any obvious differences; though Kojimaru had far more influence over the types of trees being grown. The other facet of the Mokuton that they could both use was the ability to sink into any wooden surface. If not for those two shared facets, it would almost appear as if they had two completely different Kekkei Genkai.

The two boys didn't mind though, since the fact that their abilities were so different meant that their abilities were more complimentary rather than being redundant. It also meant that there was even less of a reason for one of them to be shifted to a different team. Tenzou's love of architecture and his ability to grow wood planks and beams out of his chakra meant that he was able to grow almost any construct imaginable. Kojimaru, on the other hand, could twist trees to create more natural looking hiding places or turn the very forest against their enemies.

Even the wood clones that they learned to create were different. Kojimaru's clones were grown from a portion of a plant or tree (such as a leaf, a flower, a twig, or a seed) while Tenzou's clones were formed from his chakra and grew out of his body. Both types had their advantages; Kojimaru's requiring far less chakra to create and Tenzou's having the ability to function as a combination scout and avatar due to the fact that he remained connected to the clone until he reabsorbed its chakra into his body or it was destroyed (similar in nature to the Kage Bunshin – only more effective since he could get real-time updates from the clone).

Tenzou's ability to connect to trees and any construct he grew from his chakra made him an invaluable tracker and forward scout. It was an ability that Kojimaru wished he shared with his friend; Tenzou's ability stemming from the fact that he was a chakra sensor while Kojimaru was merely chakra sensitive. He still felt a connection to the forest but his connection only allowed him to sense the presence of living trees; not see or hear what the trees saw and heard. He also couldn't read life signs through the earth using tree roots as conductors for his earth affinity like Tenzou could. Alternatively, Tenzou really wished he had Kojimaru's ability to bring trees to life.

There were times when Aoba envied both younger boys but they never lasted long.

In addition to upping their ninjutsu training, Hayama-sensei pushed them to improve physically; driving them to become faster, stronger, and more agile. That training also saw them increasing both their stamina and endurance (two similar physical abilities that were actually quite different – stamina referring to just how long they could fight or run in peak condition while endurance referred to just how far they could push their bodies before they keeled over). As their chakra reserves expanded in response to the intense physical and ninjutsu training, they were introduced to more complex chakra control exercises in order to maintain and surpass their current control.

Those exercises included the basics of Ha no Noudo, Kinobori no Waza, and Suimen Hokou no Waza in combination with the more advanced versions (replacing leaves with pebbles or marbles, using the tree walking ability to spar or exercise on ceilings and walls, and walking up waterfalls). They were also introduced to kunai balancing, chakra strings, and chakra circulation. The first required them to balance a kunai on a fingertip, the second had them using a guide wire to practice forming strings of chakra, and the last one had them actively controlling the circulation of their chakra in order to enhance their muscles, ease muscle fatigue, reinforce bones, numb pain, and restrict blood flow to an open wound.

After their ninth birthdays, Kojimaru and Tenzou were finally introduced to kenjutsu (Hayama confident that they were finally old enough and skilled enough to not seriously injure themselves with a blade). Those lessons also coincided with the next level of Kojimaru's smithing lessons as he was finally taught how to make swords, daggers, spears, and more complicated every day tools. Once they had learned the basic stances and katas, both boys were rather quick to find a sword style that best suited their overall fighting style and once again they chose to go in different directions.

Tenzou preferred to fight with a single tanto while Kojimaru preferred to use multiple blades that fell between a dagger and a wakizashi blade in size and shape. Kojimaru was also far more likely to throw his blades at his enemies than to just use them as an extension of his arm. The reason for that was so that he could maintain his distance from those opponents that were larger and stronger than him (he was still the smallest member of their team, after all). The fact that he would eventually be able to make his own endless supply of swords through his Kekkei Genkai also meant he'd never have to worry about running out of blades to throw or wasting money to replace those that got lost or damaged.

He would still carry a small number of actual swords on his person for those times when it wasn't possible to use his Hyouton or Mokuton.

The lessons that Kosuke gave to Kojimaru (and frequently to his teammates as well) advanced at a slightly slower pace than his shinobi training due to the fact that godfather and godson saw so little of each other between missions. The same held true in the case of the lessons they received from Tenzou's adopted uncle; with Kisuke spending even less time in the village than Team Fourteen. Furthermore, Shikaku had officially been retired from his position as their babysitter just after Tenzou's eighth birthday as the current generation of Ino-Shika-Chou spent most of their time on the front lines.

The two boys still visited the Nara Compound (so Kojimaru could spend some of his limited free time with the deer) but they were more likely to crash at Tenzou's or Aoba's place if Kosuke and/or Kisuke were out on a mission. There were even times when all three boys crashed at their sensei's apartment on the night before a mission or when Tenzou and Aoba didn't want to go home looking like death warmed over least they worry their aunt and mother respectively. They could have potentially crashed at Kojimaru's place as well but Kojimaru hadn't yet learned enough fuuinjutsu to be taught how to activate and deactivate the more complex seals that were scattered about the house and gardens.

It wasn't that Kosuke didn't trust Kojimaru; it was more that Kojimaru simply had no desire to learn more than the basics of fuuinjutsu; which included exploding tags, storage seals, basic security seals, and chakra suppression seals. Out of necessity, he had also been taught out to draw and activate the seals that altered his hair, eye color, and chakra signature so that when the seals failed completely (and they would when Kasai died) he could replace them himself instead of relying on someone else to reapply them to his face and neck.

The reason for the lack of interest boiled down to Kojimaru's dislike and distaste for spilling blood; specifically when it came to spilling his own blood as he had little to no problem spilling an enemy's blood (though he still disliked killing). He could still remember Orochimaru nearly draining him dry for months on end during the time he had spent in the Sannin's clutches. So, while he didn't mind occasionally sacrificing a drop or two of blood through necessity (usually for security seals and the higher level storage seals), he drew the line at mixing his blood into the ink for the higher levels of fuuinjutsu. And he hated getting blood drawn at the Hospital.

Konoha would be attacked directly three times during those two years; once when the Kamizuru Clan attacked, once by a combined force of Iwa and Kumo shinobi, and once by a group of high level rogues that had been hired to assassinate the Hokage and a number of other key individuals. Each time, the invading forces had been repelled by Konoha's forces but not without great cost. The Aburame Clan lost a third of their members when facing the Kamizuru Clan, an eighth of the ANBU forces and nearly half of the village's reserve forces (which was made up of retired, disabled, and below average shinobi) were lost fighting off the joint Iwa and Kumo contingent, and another two squads of ANBU were lost taking down the group of hired missing nin.

Team Fourteen had been out of the village during the Kamizuru's attack and again during the multi-pronged assassination attempt but they had been there during the three day siege in February of the year two hundred ninety.

The three Chuunin had been working on their melee fighting style when the warning klaxons spread throughout the village had begun blaring loudly. The three boys had frozen in place and stared at one another in shock (since the village had never been attacked in their memory) before they immediately headed to Team Fourteen's meeting spot in order to meet up with their sensei for orders (a protocol that Hayama had established not long after they had become a team).

They wouldn't get very far before the three of them were accosted by a pair of masked ANBU guards that plucked the two nine and a half year olds off the ground and ordered Aoba to seek out their team's sensei for instructions. Kojimaru and Tenzou had then been delivered directly to Kasai's office via Transportation Scroll. Kasai immediately deactivated their disguise seals before he ordered them to change into ANBU uniforms complete with blank, featureless masks. They were then asked to each create a clone that would take their place on their team (so they wouldn't be missed) before Tenzou was handed over to an ANBU Guard wearing a dog faced masked with blue highlights while Kojimaru was assigned to one that wore a bird mask with yellow and green accents.

The reason for their complete change in looks was to protect their identities during the siege and allow them to use their full range of skills without needing to worry about who might see them using their Kekkei Genkai. Normally, Kasai wouldn't have bothered but because their strongest shinobi were currently out of the village, he was forced to use the talent he had available to him to protect the village. And there was no doubt that the two boys were talented even if they hadn't yet reached their full potential.

Tenzou would spend the duration of the siege constantly repairing any breaches in the village's curtain wall with his Mokuton while Kojimaru attacked their enemies with both his Mokuton and Hyouton using guerrilla tactics; the ANBU squad he was placed on venturing forth outside of the village walls to fight their enemies from the shadows. Aoba and the two clones were paired up with a couple of Genin teams and assigned to assist in evacuating the civilians to the emergency shelters located inside the Hokage Monument.

Once the civilians were safe, Aoba's group would spend the entire siege keeping the younger children occupied and distracted so they wouldn't panic and distributing emergency supplies as needed (and acting as a last line of defense for the civilians). Hayama and Tekuno in turn had joined the reserve force where they were each given charge of a ten man squad and assigned to protect a section of the village's wall and fend off the enemy's attempts to breach the walls.

The siege would be broken on the fourth day of fighting by the return of Team Minato; the Konoha no Kiiroi Senko dealing death without mercy to the enemy for daring to attack his home. That would be the first, last, and only time that Kojimaru witnessed Namikaze Minato decimating a large army single-handedly using his Hiraishin. Sure, Kojimaru had helped the ANBU whittle down the numbers of the enemy's force and harried them day and night but they had not cut larges swathes through the enemy's forces in the blink of an eye.

Kojimaru and Tenzou would then stand witness to Kasai getting his ass chewed out by the future Yondaime Hokage over the masked man's decision to exploit the two children's abilities. Minato had been most upset over the fact that Kojimaru had been assigned to a hit and run team and deployed outside of the safety of the walls (not that the blond knew it was him beneath the mask). Kasai was unrepentant because he'd made the decision that he believed was in the best interest of the village; something that Minato knew as well, even if the blond was displeased by his methods (since the end results spoke for themselves as the village had held strong against the siege long enough for reinforcements to arrive).

Any fame that the two Mokuton users might have gained through their actions during the siege quickly faded into obscurity as their disguises were reactivated. It helped that their team immediately resumed taking missions out of the village shortly after the village had been cleaned up. The fact that Konoha recovered so quickly on the heels of the siege served to discourage their enemies and made it appear as if they were far stronger than they were despite the extensive losses they had taken over the course of the war.

Seven months after the siege of Konoha and just one month after the attempted assassination of the Sandaime Hokage, Team Minato would undertake two missions that would facilitate the end of the war and cost the well known team one of their members.

Roughly three weeks after those two missions, on October seventeenth of two hundred-ninety, the Tsuchikage would surrender and the war would officially end. Small skirmishes would continue to break out over the course of the next two months but the bulk of the armies would begin withdrawing back to their respective villages. During those two months, all five of the Kages of the Five Great Elemental Nations, the leaders of some of the smaller hidden villages, and the Daimyou of the countries involved would meet often for peace talks and to hammer out a new treaty.

Namikaze Minato would be sworn into office one week after the treaty was officially signed; Sarutobi Hiruzen had grown weary of running the village after living through three Great Shinobi Wars and wished to spend his remaining years bonding with his family. A month after taking up office as the Yondaime Hokage, Minato would secretly marry his longtime crush and girlfriend; Uzumaki Kushina. Konoha and her people would then set about rebuilding their lives and burying their dead.

And so would end the third chapter in the life of the young orphan that had been born as Harry Potter, remade as Test Subject One-Thirty-Eight through the fires of deprivation, and reborn out of the ashes of his past as Kojimaru, Chuunin Shinobi of Konohagakure.

* * *

**Translations:** Japanese to English

Amegakure no Sato – Hidden Rain Village  
Chikushou – damn  
Dattebane – Kushina's catch phrase; has no true meaning but has been translated as 'you/ya know' in the English version of the Anime  
Dobe – idiot, loser (dead last)  
Gaki – brat  
Ha no Noudo – Leaf Concentration  
Hai – yes  
Hi no Kuni – Fire Country  
Hiraishin no Jutsu – Flying Thunder God Technique  
Kawa no Kuni – River Country (Country that stands as a buffer between Fire and Wind Countries)  
Kinobori no Waza – Tree climbing  
Konoha no Kiiroi Senko – Konoha's Yellow Flash  
Kuso – swear word  
Na no Kuni – Vegetable Country (randomly selected country for Kusagakure to be located)  
Sanshouo no Hanzou – Hanzou the Salamander  
Sawa no Kuni – Swamp Country (randomly selected country for Amegakure to be located)  
Suimen Hokou no Waza – Water walking  
Taka – Hawk  
Tani no Kuni – Valley Country (randomly selected country for Takigakure to be located)  
Teme – bastard/jerk (rude way of saying you)  
Tsuchi no Kuni – Earth Country  
Wakarimasu – I understand (formal – present tense)

* * *

**11-14-15:** _Minor edits made to chapter to fix spelling/grammar mistakes and removed unnecessary author's notes._


	12. The Disaster

**Disclaimer:** _All HP characters are the property of JKR, the WB, and respective publishing companies and all Naruto characters are the property of Masashi Kishimoto. This is nothing more than a simple FanFiction that I have written. I have made no money from this or any of the other stories I have posted on this or other sites._

**Warnings:** _Mild to moderate violence, character death, alternate universe (i.e. kiss canon goodbye), OCC behaviors and personalities, a number of original characters and obscure canon characters to flesh out family trees, random chosen last names to give a number of characters surnames, and who knows what else._

**AN:** _This story is self-beta'd; so there may be occasional grammatical or spelling errors that crop up every now and then and for those I apologize in advance._

* * *

Chapter Twelve: The Disaster

_October 10, 0292 AtD, 9:23 PM  
Unnamed stretch of Forest, Southern Cha no Kuni_

Twelve year old Kojimaru leaned over the pot of rabbit stew that was suspended over the campfire and gave the bubbling brew a deft stir with his ladle to prevent the meat and vegetables from sticking to the bottom and burning. Satisfied that he was not in danger of burning their supper, the artificial redhead sat back against the log he was sitting next to as he let his eyes drift over his teammates that were scattered about the campsite. In the background, he could hear the sound of heavy rain crashing down on the awning that he and Tenzou had hastily grown over their camp when a nasty storm had cropped up out of nowhere just a half an hour earlier.

His eyes touched on Tenzou first; his brother in blood and arms and his best friend. The slightly younger boy (by a full ten days) was still taller than Kojimaru by several inches though they weighed about the same since Kojimaru had grown stockier over the years thanks to his weaponsmithing lessons. Next there was fifteen year old Yamashiro Aoba; the unofficial adopted older brother and close friend of both younger boys. The older Chuunin towered over both twelve year olds by nearly a full foot (or well over a foot in Kojimaru's case) and that wasn't even counting the extra six inches that Aoba's gravity defying hair added to his overall height.

Then there was Kanden Tekuno; the team's second in command and something of a favorite uncle and mentor to all three boys. Tekuno was a rather easy going man that had confidence and ingenuity in spades. And lastly there was Shirakumo Hayama; the team's Jounin sensei for their first five years together and for the last year, their team's official teichou. Hayama was rather strict and unmoving on the surface but the man was not cruel in his methods or in his nature. He also truly cared about all three boys and looked out for them even as he drove them into the ground with their training.

The only one missing from the group was their part time member and Kojimaru's godfather, Maruboshi Kosuke. Kosuke only rarely ever joined them on missions these days since there wasn't really much call for a six man team. There had been some talk about Tekuno being pulled from the team as well but the Yondaime hadn't made any real attempts to break their team up. Especially when they worked so well together, maintained an impeccable mission record, and had an irreproachable reputation for maintaining their professionalism no matter what misfortune befell their team.

In the two years following the war, Team Fourteen had continued on much as they had during the war; by taking missions, fighting and capturing the handful of rogues that were displeased with the newly declared ceasefire, and training hard in order to continue improving themselves. They worked hard to help Konoha and Hi no Kuni recover from the ravages of war during that time. The first year had been the hardest but they made it through somehow.

There had even been more than a few happy occasions to celebrate; such as Shikaku's marriage to Yoshino (though that had taken place a good six months before the war ended), the Yondaime's inauguration, the Yondaime's marriage to Kushina (secret though it was for the majority of Konoha), and the scattered births of the next generation of shinobi and clan heirs. Those happy moments helped ease the grief that cloaked the village in the wake of the war. There were those that were unable to cope with their losses but on the whole, the village healed and life went on.

Smiling to himself, Kojimaru turned his attention back to their supper and prepared to give the stew another stir when he unexpectedly felt the seals maintaining his disguise shatter. He also felt something unraveling in his mind but he ignored that for the moment as he jerked his head up in shock while his eyes automatically searched out Tenzou to find that his self-claimed brother's disguise had also fallen. Tenzou was in fact staring at Kojimaru with an equally shocked and worried expression on his face.

"Teichou…!" Kojimaru cried out sharply as he jumped to his feet and snapped his eyes over to Hayama; panic and fear forming a knot in his belly at the implications of the seals failing after all this time.

"What's wrong, Koji…?" Hayama began to ask only for his question to trail off the moment he glanced up and caught sight of Kojimaru without his disguise for the first time. The man then immediately cut his eyes over to Tenzou, whose real face he was also seeing for the first time, before demanding, "What happened to the two of you?"

"Kasai-sama said the seals disguising our hair and eyes would only break upon his death," Tenzou answered in a stressed tone. "What could have possibly…?"

Hayama's lips pressed tightly together as he flicked his gaze back and forth between the two boys as he took in the differences in their appearances; Kojimaru's changes being the most drastic though he recognized the pre-teen's leaf green eyes after having caught brief glimpses of them through his disguise from time to time whenever Kojimaru felt particularly emotional.

"Do either one of you have a means of reapplying the seals or failing that, disguising yourselves without resorting to a henge that could be easily dispelled?"

"H…hai, teichou," Kojimaru answered after swallowing the bulk of his panic so that it settled like a rock in his stomach. "Our guardians taught us how to draw our specific seals while we were still in the academy and we in turn taught each other how to draw both sets so that we would both know how to do them if one of us couldn't for any reason."

"Good, as soon as you salvage our supper so we can eat, I want the two of you to reapply the seals."

"What about…?"

"There's nothing we can do out here in the middle of nowhere," Hayama pointed out before Tenzou could even finish voicing his question. "It is also important that the two of you regain the features that you've worn for the last eight years. While Tenzou's changes aren't that drastic; Kojimaru's are fairly startling. Drawing attention to yourselves now, when it appears that there is something happening back in the village, will only cause more problems in the long run.

"Wakatta, Hayama-teichou," Tenzou and Kojimaru replied in unison.

Kojimaru then spent several minutes salvaging the stew (which thankfully hadn't been completely ruined though it had developed a telling hint of burnt vegetables and meat in the flavor). An extra couple of dashes of pepper helped hide the small mishap with the meal and the five of them ate in silence; their thoughts firmly focused on any number of scenarios that might be playing out back at the village.

As soon as they finished eating what little they could stomach, Kojimaru and Tenzou rinsed out their bowls and moved off to one side of the clearing so that they could reapply their disguise seals. A short conversation conveyed through a single glance had the two of them facing one another as they simultaneously applied the seals to one another. Sure, they could have done their own seals but it was easier to do each other's so they didn't have to account for the reverse image the mirror would show them. It also allowed them a measure of comfort to know that they would always know that the other was alive and safe so long as their seals remained intact.

Once they'd finished drawing the seals, they activated each other's disguise. Kojimaru watched as Tenzou's hair faded from medium brown to dirty blond while his eyes changed from the color of dark maple syrup to thick honey even as he felt his scalp and eyes tingle as his own hair shifted from black as sin to blood red while his eyes shifted from deep green to deep blue. At the same time, Kojimaru felt a part of his mind being locked away once more but he soon shook off the odd sensation in favor of putting away the simple sealing kit he carried with him on missions.

"Good work boys," Hayama stated as he approached the pair and studied their faces just as intently as he'd studied their undisguised faces nearly an hour earlier. "I don't see any flaws or discrepancies in the disguises; which can sometimes happen when two people draw the same exact seals."

"Because everyone's handwriting is unique and even a pair of characters that look identical can have small differences that stand out if you know how to look for them," Kojimaru recited by rote as the memory of one of Kosuke's long ago writing lessons briefly surfaced. "It took well over a year before Kosuke-oji thought my recreation of Ka…Kasai's seal was adequate and another two years before he considered it good enough to pass muster. I've drawn both of those seals so many times that I could draw them in my sleep."

"My hand aches just thinking about those practice sessions," Tenzou added with a slight shudder that Kojimaru copied a split second later before they both snickered weakly because they'd been the ones to make those lessons far worse than they originally were by learning how to recreate each other's seals.

Twenty minutes later, Kojimaru was curled up in his sleeping bag with his eyes closed in an attempt to get some rest. His thoughts and fears just wouldn't stop chasing one another around inside of his head though; the mere knowledge that Kasai was dead inevitably leading to traitorous thoughts of returning home to find Kosuke dead. He knew his godfather was strong and that he could take care of himself but Kasai had been just as strong, if not stronger, and he was dead now.

He wasn't afraid of being alone; he knew that Tenzou would be there for him so long as his brother drew breath but Kosuke was Kojimaru's anchor and he just didn't know what he'd do if he lost his godfather. His godfather was also the one that kept his nightmares of his time as a captive of Orochimaru at bay. Kosuke's long ago promise to protect him and keep him safe from the traitor had been the tether that had kept him grounded in reality at a time when he could have so easily drowned in his terrible memories.

A half strangled whimper slipped passed his guard and Kojimaru felt himself shaking under the smothering weight of his fears. The sound of fabric shifting across the dirt followed by the feel of a warm body pressing up against his snapped Kojimaru out of his self-destructive thinking and he instinctively turned over and curled into Tenzou; the twelve year old both seeking and offering comfort since he knew that Tenzou had the same fear as he did. A shaky calm fell over both boys as they clung to one another and clung to the hope that everything would be fine when they returned home.

Seated with his back against a tree just a few feet from the troubled duo, Aoba sadly watched over his little honorary brothers; the fifteen year old well aware of just what dark and terrible nightmares still haunted his teammates to this day – though they usually hid their insecurities far better.

* * *

_October 12, 0292 AtD, 10:09 AM  
Konohagakure no Sato, Hi no Kuni_

The approach leading up to the main gates of Konoha looked much as it always had upon their return to the village after a mission. The view would have been reassuring to Team Fourteen if it had not been for the disquiet that clung to the forest surrounding the military village. On top of that, the very air surrounding the village was oppressive and filled with the lingering traces of foul chakra that set the entire team on edge. The closer they got to the village the larger the knot of worry in Kojimaru's belly grew.

Any relief they might have felt at being home again fled the moment they were close enough to see the extensive damage that had been done to the village and parts of the surrounding forest. All three Chuunin stumbled to a stop and Kojimaru actually let out a strangled whine as his eyes fell upon the great stretch of wall that had been destroyed along with a large track of apartments and homes and a great stretch of the forest outside of the village. Every where he looked, he could see bandaged shinobi and civilians moving amidst the rubble salvaging what they could and hauling the rest of the debris off to the landfill or the recycling center depending on what it was.

The grief that clung to the village was palpable and exceeded only by the lingering fear and anger that filled the air.

It took two full minutes before Hayama managed to prod the three young Chuunin into moving forward. When they reached the gate, Hayama held a hushed conversation with the Chuunin on duty (who was unable to provide him with any information by order of the Hokage) while Tekuno kept a close watch on the three shocked boys. Kojimaru had taken several steps in the direction of his home (the twelve year old focused on his desire to hunt down his godfather), before the normally jovial Jounin grabbed him by the shoulder and forcibly turned him towards the Hokage Tower. It tore Kojimaru's heart to pieces to delay his search just to give a mission report to the Yondaime Hokage.

The damage done to the village was even more extensive than it appeared from the outside. It literally looked like a giant being had thrown a temper tantrum in the middle of the village and jumped all around. The new scar that marred the face of the Shodai Hokage on the Hokage Mountain only emphasized the feeling of wrongness that suffused the entire village and Kojimaru found it rather difficult to breathe all of a sudden. All through the Third Great Shinobi War, Konoha had remained unmolested; a bastion of security in the sea of madness and bloodshed.

And that bastion had been breached without warning. Violently.

Tenzou shifted mid-step so that his arm was pressed up against Kojimaru's and the two twelve year olds drew strength from one another. They were still subtly leaning on one another when they passed through the gate of the curtain wall that protected the Hokage's Tower; a wall that had been partially crushed. Kojimaru's eyes lingered on the damaged stretch of wall for a moment before he tore his gaze away and stared up at the seemingly unharmed tower that housed the Hokage's office and private quarters.

Five short minutes and a short jog up the stairs had Team Fourteen standing just outside of the Hokage's office. The absence of the secretary that usually manned the desk outside of the office gave the hallway and small lobby a sinister feel. Hayama hesitated a brief moment before he knocked sharply on the door. He opened the door the moment a weary voice from the other side granted them permission to enter.

Kojimaru and Tenzou were the first ones through the door and they both stopped the instant their eyes fell on the man seated behind the desk. And while that man was just as familiar as the Yondaime, seeing him in the red and white robes of the Hokage's office was just wrong. Sarutobi Hiruzen had stepped down from his office nearly two years earlier when Namikaze Minato had been sworn in as the Yondaime Hokage.

There was only one reason that the Sandaime would take up the mantel of Hokage once more.

Kojimaru shook his head in denial. Minato couldn't be gone. The twelve year old had seen the Yondaime single-handedly crush an entire army in less than an hour. He knew there was not a single person alive that the powerful Kage couldn't defeat. The only way anyone could have possibly brought down the likes of Kasai and the Yondaime (and countless other powerful shinobi) was through treachery. The twelve year old never felt his sensei reach out and push him all the way into the office so that the rest of the team could enter the room.

"I'm certain that the last thing you wish to do is give out another explanation but what happened to the village, Ho… Hokage-sama? Where is the Yondaime?" Hayama inquired respectfully; his tongue tripping itself up over the need to address the Sandaime by his title for the first time in two years.

"The village was attacked by the Kyuubi two nights ago; Minato sacrificed himself to stop the bijuu from destroying the village entirely," the Sandaime replied after a long pause; the old shinobi looking even older than he normally did. "We lost far too many good people in our efforts to protect the village from the demon's mindless rampage."

"Ojisan…? Is he…?" Kojimaru hoarsely demanded as he took two steps forward; his eyes shining with desperation and fear as they bored into the Hokage's.

"Your godfather lives, child; though his name was listed amongst those that were critically injured during the attack…"

Kojimaru reeled back as though he'd been physically struck by the Hokage's words. Numbness washed through him and his world tilted dangerously as all of his fears came crashing down on him. When he regained his equilibrium, he found himself seated on the Hokage's couch with his head being held between his knees by Hayama.

"Are you going to be alright now, Kojimaru?" Hayama asked when Kojimaru tentatively lifted his head.

"Oji…"

"Is alive," Hayama firmly reminded him. "I will go with you to find him as soon as we are finished here. In the mean time, you need to hold yourself together; you will do your godfather no good if you make yourself sick with worry while allowing your imagination to run wild."

"Ha…hai, sensei."

"Good," Hayama replied before ruffling Kojimaru's hair. The Jounin then stood up to address the Hokage, "What are your orders, sir?"

"What is your team's current status? Were any of you injured over the course of your recent mission?"

"Aside from being shaken over the state in which we found the village upon our return, we are fine."

"That is a relief. I can give you six hours to recoup from your journey, write up your written reports, and take care of any urgent personal business before I will need your team to help clear away the rubble. You can report directly to Nara Shikaku and he will assign you to a clean up crew. Once the remainder of those teams that were out of the village on missions return, I will be making several village wide announcements; so you can expect to remain in the village for at least a week or two."

"Wakarimasu, Hokage-sama."

They were dismissed at that point and Tenzou latched onto Kojimaru's wrist and dragged him out of the office through the window where they would take to the roofs as they made a beeline for the battered building that housed Konoha's Hospital. Kojimaru heard Hayama yell after them but neither he nor Tenzou looked back or slowed down. They were halfway to the hospital when Kojimaru suddenly pulled up and yanked Tenzou to a stop.

"What are you doing?" Tenzou demanded in confusion.

"We have to find Emiko-san first. We already know ojisan is… is hurt but we also know he's alive. We need to make certain that Kisuke and Emiko are both okay as well before we go see Kosuke-oji."

"Weren't you paying any attention? Kisuke-oji was standing guard in the Hokage's office. He's fine and he would have let me know if anything had happened to obasan."

"Oh," Kojimaru replied in surprise as he allowed Tenzou to start dragging him towards the hospital once more; he hadn't even noticed that Kisuke was in the office. He'd been far too busy panicking upon hearing that his godfather had been critically injured.

When they dropped back down to the streets just outside of the hospital some three minutes later, they found a slightly annoyed Hayama waiting for them on the steps leading up into the building. The Jounin let out a small sigh and shook his head the moment he saw the two boys before he gestured for them to hurry up and get inside as he opened the door for them. Once inside of the building, Kojimaru's panic returned threefold.

He had grown to hate hospitals by the end of the Third Great Shinobi War.

And while he personally disliked it each and every time Hayama dragged him to the hospital for a medical evaluation or medical attention when his body was too exhausted to heal itself, he found his discomfort and disgust with the building multiplying exponentially over the fact that his _critically injured_ godfather was somewhere inside of the building. Terror and horror warred within him as his teichou steered him towards the receptionist in order to find out which room Kosuke was being kept in.

By the time the three of them were standing outside of Kosuke's hospital room, Kojimaru was shaking. Hayama sighed yet again as he opened the door and shoved Kojimaru inside. The twelve year old felt his breath hitch as his eyes landed up the bruised face of his godfather. He took two stumbling steps forward as he tried not to think of how fragile (how old) his godfather looked trussed up to several diabolical machines (all medical equipment were demonic instruments of torture in the twelve year old's mind and no one would ever convince him otherwise) with his hair unbound.

A low, tortured moan was drawn forth from Kojimaru's lips when his eyes shifted down to lock onto the unnaturally shortened length of his godfather's left leg; the limb had been amputated just below the knee.

"It's not as bad as it looks," Hayama quietly assured the pre-teen as he dropped his hand down onto Kojimaru's shoulder.

Kojimaru bit his lip and jerkily nodded in response to his sensei's words. He then hesitantly crept up to the bed (his eyes warily eyeing the torture devices hooked up to his godfather) until he reached the chair beside the bed. His hands gripped the back of the chair in a white knuckled grip in an effort to stop his hands from shaking as his eyes inevitably returned to the shortened limb of his godfather's left leg. He had no idea just how long he'd been standing there before he found the courage to sit down in the chair and awkwardly latched onto Kosuke's hand; taking care to avoid touching any of the tubes and wires that had been attached to his godfather. He never noticed Hayama silently pull Tenzou from the room to give him a bit of privacy.

The young Chuunin would eventually fall asleep with his head pillowed on the bed beside Kosuke's hip with one hand clutching his godfather's hand like a lifeline.

* * *

_October 21, 0292 AtD, 12:01 PM  
Konohagakure no Sato, Hi no Kuni_

Kojimaru wrapped his arms around his legs and rested his chin on his knees as his eyes focused on the newly scarred Monument that loomed over the Hokage's Tower while he (and the rest of the village) waited for the Sandaime Hokage to make a village wide announcement. The twelve year old was seated precariously on an undamaged section of the curtain wall that guarded the Hokage's Tower alongside a good number of the village's able bodied shinobi while the courtyard below was packed tightly with civilians and the injured.

Pressed up against either side of him in a silent offer of support and comfort were Tenzou and Aoba. His self-adopted brothers had rarely left his side since the day after their team had returned to the village; the two of them taking it upon themselves to make certain that he took care of himself. If not for their stubborn support and well meaning bullying at times, he probably would have begun wasting away at Kosuke's bedside. They were the only ones that had been able to pry him away from Kosuke's unconscious side for a shower and food during the first two days they had been back.

It wasn't until Kosuke had woken up on the morning of the third day that Kojimaru felt a kernel of hope rekindle itself in his heart. He still didn't want to leave his godfather's side and he'd actually growled at the medics more than once when they attempted to chase him off the moment visiting hours were over or when they needed to change the bandages on Kosuke's leg. After the umpteenth complaint from the medical staff, Hayama had put his foot down and hauled the over-protective Kojimaru off to the closest training ground to knock a bit of sense into the pre-teen.

Since the day his Jounin-teichou had hauled him off for an attitude adjustment, Kojimaru had only been allowed to spend a handful of hours at the hospital each day. The rest of the time, he'd been helping to repair the damage that the Kyuubi had done to the village. Like the day that Iwa and Kumo had laid siege to the village, Kojimaru and Tenzou had both dropped their disguises and donned ANBU uniforms and unmarked masks (this time under Shikaku's direction) so that they could use their Mokuton to reconstruct the damaged perimeter wall and shore up the village's defenses.

It was a rather thankless job.

Few of the villagers (shinobi and civilian alike) could understand just how much effort and chakra it took to produce the sheer volume of wood required to rebuild the walls. Most of them wanted to hound the two Chuunin into producing complete buildings in the blink of an eye to replace those that had been crushed. Sure, he and Tenzou had grown during the six years since they'd earned their hitai-ate but they were still just children and they still had a lot to learn. If not for Shikaku and his two teammates personally looking out for the pair, they'd have ended up in the hospital or the morgue due to life threatening chakra exhaustion because of the many attempts to run them ragged.

As it was, by the end of each day, the two of them were utterly exhausted. Tenzou usually ended up in worse shape than Kojimaru after they'd finished what repairs they could for the day; the taller twelve year old still had smaller chakra reserves than Kojimaru. It didn't help that the supervisors preferred Tenzou to do the building because his Mokuton was more akin to actual construction while Kojimaru's was more along the lines of natural formation. Not that it really mattered either way when it came to the wall since their work would be hidden by a layer of chakra enhanced concrete and painted to match the rest of the wall.

Kojimaru's abilities would actually be used to regrow the ruined swaths of forest both inside and outside of the village once most of the wall had been repaired; the trees considered another layer of the village's defense in that they were heavily relied upon for concealment and as an alternate path for the shinobi. They were also an important resource as the many plants that grew beneath their boughs provided food, medicines, and poisons that were difficult to grow in a garden or green house. The game animals that they hunted made their homes in the forest as well and without that extra source of food, the village would suffer because the scattered farms in the area couldn't support the population of the village on their own.

The only reason the two boys weren't draining their reserves dry on the next repair project at the moment was because of the village wide announcement that the Hokage wished to make. Kojimaru would much rather be sitting guard over his godfather to make certain nothing further happened to the man while waiting for the medics to release him.

Kojimaru was just considering the chances of sneaking back to the hospital when he was alerted to the Hokage's arrival on the balcony overlooking the courtyard by a wave of silence washing over the gathered crowd. Dropping his eyes from the stone faces of the village's venerable leaders, Kojimaru let his eyes focus on the living face of their past and current leader. And though he was too far away to clearly see the man's face, the twelve year old knew that Sarutobi Hiruzen's face would be frozen in a stern but benevolent mask that barely held his grief in check.

He'd seen that mask many times over the course of the war; the aged shinobi had worn that same look each time their team had walked into the Hokage's office for another mission.

"Tragedy has once again befallen upon our beloved village," the Sandaime intoned gravely; his voice easily carrying on the cool breeze that swirled in the October air. "Eleven days ago, our village was ravaged by the rampaging Kyuubi no Youko. Many of our comrades fell to the demon and many more were injured before the Yondaime Hokage defeated the Kyuubi by sealing him into a newborn child at the cost of his own life. Our village suffered extensive damage before the bijuu could be contained though. Hard times lie ahead for us. We will have to be vigilant to protect our home from those that will try to take advantage of us in our weakened state."

The Hokage paused for a moment as he glanced out over the crowd before he continued, "We have to hide our grief and stand strong now, more than ever. We can't allow even a single one of our enemies to think they have even a ghost of a chance to hurt us more in the wake of our tragedy. As such, I am officially reinstating the wartime protocols. All able bodied shinobi with a minimum of one year's experience will be pulled from the reconstruction and clean up efforts so that they can resume taking missions immediately. You will have three hours to present yourselves to my office to receive your new team formations and your next mission assignment."

"All members of the reserve forces are hereby reinstated to active duty. All civilians between the ages of fifteen and twenty that have had at least one year of training at the Academy will be conscripted into the force. Those civilians with any medical training are asked to present themselves to the hospital to help tend to those people with minor and non-life threatening injuries. The minimum age required for entrance into the Shinobi Academy has been dropped back down to age four and the minimum graduation age once again lowered to age five."

"Effective immediately; curfew has been set at nine p.m. for all civilians and at ten p.m. for all Academy students. Any non-shinobi caught on the streets after curfew will be taken into custody for questioning; exceptions will only be made for those working the graveyard shift at the hospital, those in need of immediate medical attention, and those civilians who are leaving or returning to the village after curfew on authorized missions in the company of a shinobi. And lastly, all citizens are required to carry their identification cards on them at all times; those individuals caught without a valid identification card will be taken into custody for questioning."

"Come on, you three; let's go get our marching orders," Hayama instructed the moment the Hokage walked back into the building as the rest of the crowd began to disperse.

Kojimaru numbly allowed Aoba and Tenzou to haul him to his feet before the three Chuunin followed after their captain while Tekuno brought up the rear. Their team would be amongst the first to arrive in the lobby outside of the Hokage's office along with several other young Genin and Chuunin that had graduated from the Academy right around the same time as they had. Kojimaru was quick to note that theirs was the only complete team present with Hayama and Tekuno being the only Jounin in the group.

Shikaku stepped out of the Hokage's office just a moment later and scanned the small crowd in his office before he addressed their team, "Oh good, the five of you are already here; so nice of you to save me the hassle of hunting you down. Come on in, the Hokage is expecting you. For the rest of you; all Genin are to report to the mission desk on the first floor where they will give you your new team assignments and all Chuunin are to gather in the briefing room on the second floor where you will pick up your new team assignments and job assignments."

Kojimaru felt more than a little nervous when he stepped into the office and saw that it wasn't just the Hokage waiting for them inside. He easily recognized Jiraiya the Sennin (a man he'd only seen from a distance a few times over the past eight years bar that first time he saw the man after he'd first been rescued from Orochimaru's lab), Maboroshi Kisuke (Tenzou's adopted uncle), Yamanaka Inoichi, and Akimichi Chouza (the latter two Shikaku's teammates). There was also a rather intimidating bear of a man wearing a trench coat and a black bandana over his scalp that Kojimaru didn't know and another man in an ANBU uniform wearing Kasai's mask.

The twelve year old couldn't help but flinch when he heard Shikaku snap the door shut behind them the moment all five of them were inside of the office; his eyes never leaving the familiar trio of swirling flames on Kasai's mask. A heartbeat later, his attention was pulled from the impostor wearing a dead man's mask by the sound of the Hokage's voice as the aged shinobi addressed Team Fourteen.

"Due to the high number of fatalities and injuries that were incurred during the Kyuubi's attack a week and a half ago, it is far too impractical for me to keep a five-man squad on the active roster. As such, I am permanently disbanding Team Fourteen. Shirakumo Hayama and Kanden Tekuno; the two of you are being reassigned to a three-man Jounin squad with Mimura Hamaki. Your first assignment is to deliver urgent orders to the outposts situated along the border between Hi no Kuni and Na no Kuni."

"Once you have checked in with each of the outposts, you are to patrol that stretch of border until the thirtieth of November when you will be relieved by another team. I have already sent a Chuunin to track down and brief your final team member and he will be given instructions to meet you at the main gates in one hour."

"Hai, Hokage-sama," Hayama replied as he stepped forward to take the satchel that Jiraiya held out for him. The Jounin then turned to face the three boys that he had worked with for six years now. "Even though Team Fourteen has been officially disbanded, the three of you will always be welcome to come to me if you ever need anything. Be careful and stay safe out there. And whatever you do, never stop growing and improving yourselves."

"Hai, sensei!" Aoba and Tenzou replied in unison while Kojimaru just nodded; his eyes shining brightly as he solemnly held the older man's gaze for several seconds.

"See you around, gaki," Tekuno affectionately added as he fondly ruffled their hair before he followed Hayama out of the office. "If you need me, you know where to find me."

* * *

**Translations:** Japanese to English

Cha no Kuni – Tea Country  
Gaki – brat  
Hai – yes  
Na no Kuni – Vegetable Country (randomly selected country for Kusagakure to be located)  
Obasan/oba – aunt  
Ojisan/oji – Uncle  
Teichou – captain  
Wakarimasu – I understand (formal – present tense)

* * *

**11-14-15:** _Minor edits made to chapter to fix spelling/grammar mistakes and removed unnecessary author's notes._


	13. The Aftermath

**Disclaimer:** _All HP characters are the property of JKR, the WB, and respective publishing companies and all Naruto characters are the property of Masashi Kishimoto. This is nothing more than a simple FanFiction that I have written. I have made no money from this or any of the other stories I have posted on this or other sites._

**Warnings:** _Mild to moderate violence, character death, alternate universe (i.e. kiss canon goodbye), OCC behaviors and personalities, a number of original characters and obscure canon characters to flesh out family trees, random chosen last names to give a number of characters surnames, and who knows what else._

**AN:** _This story is self-beta'd; so there may be occasional grammatical or spelling errors that crop up every now and then and for those I apologize in advance._

* * *

Chapter Thirteen: The Aftermath

_October 21, 0292 AtD, 12:38 PM  
Konohagakure no Sato, Hi no Kuni_

Kojimaru watched the two men walk away until Shikaku closed the door behind them. He then swung his gaze back around to glare mutinously at the Hokage as the fear that he would also be separated from Tenzou and Aoba crowded into his heart. The soft sizzle of a privacy barrier being raised momentarily distracted the twelve year old from the object of his ire and he swung his gaze upwards to watch the barrier forming around the room before it disappeared from the visible spectrum.

"Chuunin Kojimaru and Tenzou; please release the disguises that you are wearing," the Sandaime ordered as soon as the room was secured.

"Nani…?" Tenzou blurted out in a slightly worried tone.

"The original arrangement that I made with Torifu just over eight years ago, was that I would remain ignorant of the hidden identities that I had asked him to create for you until the two of you were promoted to Chuunin or reached your fifteenth birthday; which ever came second. I knew that he had split the two of you up and had placed you in the care of different guardians for your protection but I certainly never expected him to have altered your faces to further hide you."

"I will confess that I had actually forgotten all about the two of you right up until I witnessed each of you using your Kekkei Genkai during the siege nearly three years ago. Had everything gone to plan, I would not have learned of your true identities for another three years. Unfortunately, Torifu was struck down by the Kyuubi on the tenth and one of the contingency plans he had set up for a number of different scenarios came into play and now here we are."

The Hokage paused a moment to light his pipe before he continued, "Torifu's notes contained a copy of the seals that he used to alter the color of your hair and eyes and as such, I am fully aware that the seals would have failed the moment that Torifu died; leaving the two of you vulnerable to discovery. What I would like, is for the two of you to deactivate the temporary seals that I was informed the two of you had been taught in the event that something happened to Torifu so that Jiraiya can reapply the original seal."

"Temporary…?" Tenzou repeated in confusion.

"Hai, temporary," Jiraiya agreed as he leaned to one side and scratched at the back of his left calf with his right foot. "It isn't the actual seal that was temporary but the method of activation that you were taught. The arrays were designed in such a way that it is impossible for a person to apply and fully activate the seal using their own chakra. In other words, someone else has to draw the seals and activate them for you in order for them to become semi-permanent. Didn't you wonder why you've had to activate the seals every twelve hours in order to maintain your disguises since Torifu's death?"

"Chigau," Tenzou answered with a shake of his head. "We didn't draw or activate our own seals; we drew and activated them for each other."

"I was under the impression that the two of you were only taught the seals that were used in your personal disguises and it would have taken a considerable amount of practice in order to flawlessly replicate the original seals used. And yet, I do not see any discrepancies in your disguises that are indicative of the presence of minor flaws that often appear when one merely copies an array."

"We taught each other how to draw both seals right from the start," Tenzou admitted with a light shrug; eliciting an amused snort of exasperation from Kisuke.

"I see. Can the two of you deactivate the seals so that we can inspect them? I would also like to see your actual faces again so that I can refresh my memory," the Hokage requested after taking a moment to digest Tenzou's answer.

Kojimaru and Tenzou automatically turned to share a single look before Kojimaru dropped his eyes to the floor and Tenzou turned to his guardian and asked, "Ojisan…?"

"Go ahead; you have nothing to fear from those in this room, Tenzou-kun," Kisuke replied without hesitation.

"The same goes for you, Kojimaru-kun," Shikaku interjected with a lazy drawl. "I spoke with Kosuke while Hokage-sama was making the announcement earlier and he gave his permission for you to do as the Hokage asks; knowing full well what you would be asked to do today. He also asked me to remind you that it is rude to give the Hokage the silent treatment."

"Fine," Kojimaru sighed tiredly as he brought his hands up to form the tiger seal. He closed his eyes and concentrated for a moment before he reopened his eyes and uttered a sharp but quiet, "Kai."

Everyone stared at the twelve year old expectantly but quickly began to frown when nothing changed. All three young Chuunin snickered softly (and weakly in Kojimaru's case) as they glanced at one another because Kojimaru had just released Tenzou's disguise, not his own. The funny part was that the adults should have known that the two boys couldn't dispel their own disguises because the arrays had incorporated a security seal in them to prevent anyone from walking up and dispelling their disguises by accident; meaning that only the activator could deactivate the seals.

"Kai," Tenzou called out once he stopped laughing at the adults and the sound of flesh hitting flesh shot through the room as several of the adults palmed their faces the moment they realized they'd forgotten the way the seals worked.

"Such a startling contrast," the Hokage murmured as his gaze lingered on Kojimaru for a long moment before he glanced towards Tenzou. "I take it that you were already aware of who your teammates were and what they looked like, Chuunin Yamashiro?"

"Hai, I learned about their Kekkei Genkai and their past after the first time we ran into Iwa scouts on a mission. I didn't see what they looked like without their disguises until their seals broke during our last mission as part of Team Fourteen though."

"Are you going to split us up?" Kojimaru demanded before the Hokage could say another word; his green eyes zeroing in on the old man as a warning flashed through their depths.

"No," the Hokage replied after a long pause in which he held Kojimaru's gaze while he drew on his pipe. "I would be a fool to break up the three of you when you work so well together. If not for the staggering losses that we took during the Kyuubi's attack, I would not have pulled Hayama or Tekuno from your team either. I also received multiple warnings through the years from many sources on what happens to those that attempt to separate the two of you. I have no desire to wind up on the wrong side of one of your infamous pranks."

Kojimaru nodded sagely in response to the reassurance that he wasn't going to be torn from the rest of his teammates before he dropped his glare and asked, "What's going to happen to us then?"

"I was getting to that," the Hokage chided with a trace of exasperation. Kojimaru blushed lightly at the rebuke but didn't really feel any remorse for demanding answers. "Jiraiya, if you will give their seals a quick inspection while I debrief them on their new duties?"

The white haired Sennin hummed an agreement before he approached Kojimaru while running through a short string of hands seals to activate a viewing technique that would allow him to reveal the hidden seals without actually activating them. Kojimaru fidgeted uncomfortably as the older shinobi's chakra slid across his skin and the man firmly grabbed hold of his chin to hold his face still.

"Knowing what I do now in regards to your skills in combination with your mission records from the last six years, it has been decided that the three of you will be designated as Team Kage from this point forward and you will be assigned to the Torture and Interrogation Department as a Capture and Retrieve Team where you will work closely with the ANBU's Hunter Nin Division. Once the village has recovered from this latest tragedy, the three of you will have the option of formally joining the T and I Department or the ANBU Ranks."

The Hokage paused just long enough for them to acknowledge their reassignment before he continued, "Allow me to introduce you to your direct supervisors; Morino Ibiki, the newly promoted head of the T and I Department, and Kasai, the ANBU Commander. They will be overseeing all future training for Team Kage from this point forward and will be the ones who decide which missions your team will be assigned for the foreseeable future."

Kojimaru glanced at the two men in question as they silently acknowledged their introductions with stoic nods instead of verbal replies. The twelve year old was slightly confused when his teammates seemed to recognize Morino-san's name since he would have surely remembered the intimidating, bear-like man's name if they'd met before. The fact that the Hokage had just introduced the masked man as Kasai stirred up a mixture of negative emotions in the Chuunin though.

"That's not Kasai," Kojimaru stubbornly growled before his brain could filter his mouth as he jerked his chin out of Jiraiya's hands in agitation. He may not have particularly liked Kasai but he had respected him. "Kasai is dead."

"Kasai is the ANBU Commander. From the moment that the Ansatsu Senjutsu Tokushu Butai Corps was established by the Nidaime shortly after the village was formed, the commander of the Corps has been named Kasai and worn the mask of flames," Shikaku explained patiently as Jiraiya briefly recaptured Kojimaru's chin before he released the jutsu and let go. "It is not the man that defines the mask but the mask that defines the man and from the moment one takes up the mask, they become Kasai. Think of the name Kasai as more of a title rather than an actual name. Much like the leaders of our village each took up the title of Hokage upon their inauguration."

"The man you came to know as Kasai was named Akimichi Torifu," Chouza added in a deep rumble as Jiraiya moved over to check Tenzou's seals. "He was my uncle and he was a great man both in and out of the mask. He died fighting to protect this village and he would have been honored to know that you remembered and respected him. He would also be offended if you treated his successor with anything less than complete respect for my uncle carefully chose his successor five years ago from the men and women that he'd trained during the thirty years he'd worn the mask."

"Sumimasen, I meant no disrespect; Kasai-sama," Kojimaru contritely apologized as he bowed to the masked man who would be in a position to put him through living hell in the very near future. "I just…"

"Miss those who were taken from us before their time," Kasai finished for him; his light tenor far warmer than his predecessor's had been. "I took no offense to your defense of a man whom held your respect for I too feel like a fraud wearing the mask of my mentor. I can only hope that I will live up to the reputation that Torifu built for Kasai during his years as our Commander. Just keep in mind that I will not be so forgiving in the future should you intentionally be disrespectful of me or my status."

"Hai, Kasai-sama."

"Well, that one certainly has spirit," Ibiki quipped in a deep baritone laced with just the smallest hint of amusement – though no trace of said amusement actually crossed his face.

"I think the word you are actually looking for is troublesome," Shikaku countered with a weary sigh. "I should know; I used to babysit the gaki all the time."

"You're just jealous because the deer like me better than they like you," Kojimaru retorted as he crossed his arms over his chest and scowled at the lazy Nara.

"As entertaining as it would be to listen to the two of you tell incriminating stories about one another, I don't really have time to sit here and listen to you two see who can embarrass who more," the Hokage dryly interjected when Shikaku opened his mouth to reply.

"Mendoukusei."

"You ran right into that," Inoichi stage whispered as he leaned closer to the now disgruntled Nara.

"Was there anything else you needed to tell us, Hokage-sama?" Aoba inquired as Kojimaru and Tenzou both began snickering in response to Shikaku getting in trouble right alongside the green eyed pre-teen.

"No, I believe I have covered all of the pertinent points. Ibiki can explain the details of your new assignments, give you your new schedules, and answer any questions that you might have. Jiraiya, are you finished examining their seals?"

"Hai, sensei; I saw what I needed to see and both arrays are flawless. They even incorporated the secondary seal arrays that Kasai mentioned in his notes into the arrays."

"I guess that means the three of you are dismissed."

"Follow me, boys," Ibiki instructed as he headed for the door without bothering to glance in their direction.

Kojimaru sighed as he gathered a pulse of chakra in his right hand and tapped Tenzou on the center of his forehead to activate the color changing seals at the same time as Tenzou did the same for him. He shivered and shook his head to shake off the odd feeling of his eyes being altered before he trotted after his new supervisor. Just before he exited the room, he glanced back over his shoulder to meet the Hokage's and the new Kasai's gaze one last time.

"What were you thinking, Kojimaru? Were you trying to get yourself a citation?" Aoba demanded in a low hiss as the three of the hurried to catch up with Ibiki.

"I'm tired," Kojimaru replied as he deftly slipped through the group of shinobi that had gathered in the lobby outside of the Hokage's office; most of them Jounin. "They were going to split us up. And I was scared that they would order me out of the village on a mission. Kosuke-oji is being released today and he's going to need help around the house while his… his leg finishes healing before they can fit him for a prosthetic. He'll need me to take care of the gardens, do the grocery shopping, and collect those things he doesn't grow at home from the forest. I can't do all of that if I'm not in the village and there won't be any shinobi to spare for such mundane tasks."

"What makes you think they were going to split us up?" Aoba asked after a moment; the rest of Kojimaru's statement not exactly unexpected given how deeply Kojimaru had been affected by his godfather's injury.

"When I asked him if he was going to split us up, the Hokage hesitated before he actually answered. He was weighing the benefits and drawbacks to allowing us to remain a team. He probably made plans for either scenario and waited until the last minute to make a decision; which would have been when we were standing in front of him."

"Actually, it was Torifu who planned to split the two of you up at the first opportunity presented," Ibiki interjected as the four of them stepped outside of the tower. "Shikaku argued against taking that course of action before he put forth the suggestion of having you work with my department. Having a dedicated team capable of capturing spies, traitors, and any number of suspected and known criminals would be far more beneficial to my department than requiring us to file missions for teams that may or may not be able to pull off the missions because the number of Jounin available for such missions was drastically reduced."

"Why not ask for Hayama-teichou and Tekuno-san to be assigned to your department then?" Tenzou asked curiously as they moved from the streets to the rooftops to avoid the workers that were cleaning up the debris that was still scattered about the entire village. "They are far more experienced than us."

"Two reasons; the first is that the two of you needed to be pulled from the repair crews before some stupid fool got you killed by over working you to take advantage of your unique abilities and the second because Shikaku predicted that you would balk at being forced out of the village on a near constant basis due to the injuries that your godfather sustained."

"I guess that means I owe Shikaku-san a huge debt," Kojimaru murmured softly as he glanced back over his shoulder towards the Hokage Tower as if to catch a glimpse of the man in question.

"Why not offer him your services as a babysitter? I think he'd appreciate the irony of his former charge being charged to watch over his son from time to time," Aoba suggested with a grin. "And we both know you'd love the chance to corrupt a Nara."

"That could be fun," Tenzou agreed with an answering grin.

"Ano… Morino-san, why did you agree to that suggestion?" Kojimaru inquired once he realized that the man had only half answered Tenzou's question; the pre-teen temporarily setting aside Aoba's suggestion.

"Because I owe you and your team a debt," Ibiki replied as he slowed to a stop and glanced down at the trio of Chuunin. "If not for Team Fourteen, I would have died four years ago. I also know that you risked your life to transport the bodies of my teammates home so that they could be properly laid to rest and brought word to the Hokage of Team Taka's fate."

"You're welcome," Aoba sincerely and solemnly replied before a rather mischievous grin tugged at the corners of his mouth as he slyly asked, "Does that mean you'll go easy on us when it comes to training?" Ibiki just gave the fifteen year old a _look_ over his shoulder that had the teen shuddering. "Just joking around a bit, Ibiki-san…"

"Ha, ha, ha," Ibiki slowly laughed in a creepy monotone that actually freaked all three boys out; though they tried not to show it.

They were so busy pretending not to be scared that they completely missed the smug smirk that briefly flashed across Ibiki's face. Silence settled over the trio at that point, their insecurities (which were mostly Kojimaru and Tenzou's insecurities) rearing their heads due to the rapid changes that had been made to their lives that afternoon. They would arrive at the T and I Facility just eight minutes later.

The next hour was spent getting a bare bones tour of the facility and learning the protocols that they would be required to follow now that they were working for the department. It was a lot of information to take in but Ibiki kindly provided them each with a scroll detailing all of the rules and regulations that they would need to memorize and follow. They were then dismissed for the day and told to show up bright and early the following morning for a skill assessment and a medical evaluation.

As soon as Kojimaru said his goodbyes, he dashed off towards the hospital to see if his godfather had been discharged by the medics yet. The moment he reached the front of the hospital, Kojimaru stumbled to a stop as he unexpectedly found Kosuke patiently sitting on one of the benches just outside of the entrance. A grin threatened to split the twelve year old's face in half as he immediately realized that his godfather had both been discharged from the hospital and that the man had waited for him instead of just heading straight home.

"Ojisan!" Kojimaru called happily as he all but flew up the stairs. He just barely managed to restrain the urge he felt to throw himself into the man's arms; the knowledge that his godfather was still healing the only thing stopping him. His eyes studiously ignored the empty half of pant leg that was pinned to Kosuke's left thigh as he asked, "Have you been waiting long?"

"No, I just sat down a few minutes ago. I thought it would be nice to sit out here and enjoy the fresh air while I waited for you," Kosuke replied with a smile.

"Did you want to sit here for a while before we head home?" Kojimaru asked a little hesitantly; he had no idea how to treat his godfather at the moment – the pre-teen knew the man would not take kindly to being coddled like an invalid but also wished to keep the man from overdoing things.

"No, I am ready to see my gardens and enjoy a cup of real tea," Kosuke replied as he pushed himself up onto his foot while collecting the pair of crutches he'd been issued.

The walk home had never seemed so long or so fraught with danger and Kojimaru felt his insides twisting up in knots each time his godfather faltered as he maneuvered around large sections of broken concrete or partially collapsed walls. He snapped at more than a few people that had been carelessly rushing along the roads when they bumped into Kosuke and nearly knocked him over; the twelve year old memorizing the faces of those that didn't apologize even as he began planning retaliation pranks for their rudeness. (Much to his godfather's exasperation and amusement.)

Kojimaru felt nothing but relief when they finally reached the house; only for that relief to turn to shock and dismay when he took in the state of the house. The front garden was a mess and he could see the koi floating belly up in the pond; all twelve of the two foot long fish long dead, their bodies bloated in death. Most of the plants were dead or dying and there was a fine layer of chalky dust coating everything. The house itself was still standing but the roof had been damaged in places due to flying debris and there was even an uprooted tree sticking out of the side of the house.

Since the day they had returned to the village, Kojimaru had avoided the house since he believed that he wouldn't be able to get through the barriers without Kosuke. He also hadn't wanted to be alone inside of the house that held so much of his godfather in it when he knew his worry would drive him to nightmares. Shame filled him over the state of the house because he'd been too scared to even bother checking on the house and had not even considered that his godfather might not have had time to raise the defensive barriers before he left to help fight off the Kyuubi.

"It looks like we have a bit of work to do," Kosuke mused around a heavy sigh.

"Gomen, oji; I should have…"

"It is not your fault; I know you have not had an easy time since returning. I also know that you have been kept busy helping with the village wide repairs. As bad as the damage is, it could have been far worse. And salvaging what I can of our gardens will help me keep from growing too bored when you are not here to distract me from my convalescence. Come; let us go see if the kitchen is usable or if we will need to break out our camping gear to brew a pot of tea."

"Hai, oji."

The kitchen turned out to be a complete mess; what with the tree sitting in the middle of the room. Kojimaru couldn't just remove the tree using his Mokuton either because someone would notice the sudden disappearance right away since the tree was rather large. Luckily, their camping supplies had been unharmed and in no time at all, Kojimaru was heating up the water for their tea over a coffee can campfire. Going through the familiar motions of brewing tea also allowed the twelve year old to center himself; which had been the point of Kosuke asking him to brew the tea instead of brewing it himself like he normally would.

The two of them had been sitting on the kitchen floor amidst the branches of the tree cluttering up the room sipping tea in silence for nearly a half an hour when Kosuke set his cup down and let out a soft sigh before he stated, "Something is bothering you."

"Hai," Kojimaru quietly admitted as he kept his eyes fixed on the cooling amber liquid in his cup. "A whole lot of somethings, actually."

"Hnn. When you are ready to talk, I will be here to listen."

"The Hokage disbanded Team Fourteen," Kojimaru offered as he curled in on himself. "Well, more like split it in half."

"Did he place you and Tenzou on separate teams?" Kosuke inquired with some concern; his godfather well aware of just how distraught and irritable his godson became when separated from his best friend.

"Iie, he pulled Hayama and Tekuno from the team to form a three-man cell with another Jounin; leaving me, Tenzou, and Aoba alone. We're Team Kage now. We won't be going on normal missions any more either; we've been assigned to the T and I department."

"You do not wish to be part of that department."

"No, I don't. They're going to have us hunting down and capturing people again. It's slightly better than hunting and killing but I still don't really like it."

"You are afraid that it will remind you too much of the war."

"Partially… mostly I just fear that we will end up facing off against… I mean, we'll be chasing after criminals, traitors, and spies and _he_ is a traitor."

"Why does the mere possibility that you could face Orochimaru still frighten you so much, Kojimaru?"

"Because I want to face him; I want to kill him for what he did to me. To Tenzou. To the others that didn't survive. I hate him. I hate what he stole from me… from us. And I want to rip the answers to all of the questions I've never been able to answer right out of his mind. Most of all, I just want to make him suffer the way that he made us suffer."

"You want revenge," Kosuke quietly surmised.

"Yes; and that is what frightens me. I don't want to be like those missing nin we've captured in the past that were so consumed by their hatred that they threw away everything to seek vengeance."

"I do not believe that you will ever abandon the village or your friends," Kosuke stated with certainty as he poured himself a fresh cup of tea. "That is not who you are. The fact that you acknowledge your fears and your flaws are proof enough that you would fight against falling into the trap of an avenger."

Kojimaru felt a measure of tension melt away upon hearing his godfather's words. He then glanced up from his cup and gave Kosuke a small smile of thanks; though he was extra careful not to let his gaze touch upon his godfather's missing leg in passing.

"Was that all that has been bothering you or was there something else?"

Kojimaru just shrugged as he dropped his eyes back to his tea; there was actually a lot still bothering him. He just didn't know if he could actually bring it up just yet. He wanted to but he was almost afraid of what his godfather would think of him if he did. The silence would drag out for several minutes before Kosuke prompted him, "Kojimaru…?"

"Kasai… Torifu is dead. Someone else wears his mask now," Kojimaru blurted out as his resolve to keep his insecurities to himself crumbled under his need for reassurance. "We were still on our last mission when the seals broke."

"He did," Kosuke agreed solemnly. "A lot of good people died that night."

"I almost lost you."

"I am old, Kojimaru; and I will not live forever. I am also a shinobi and I have sworn to protect our village with my life."

"I know that. I do. I just… It's just that… you're the closest thing to a parent I've ever known and I don't know what I'd do without you. I know I'd never be alone… not so long as I had Tenzou and Aoba but I'd still be lost without you."

Kojimaru felt his godfather's strong arms wrap around him a heartbeat later and he didn't hesitate to press his face into the man's chest in return. And while his godfather's strength had been diminished by his injury, he was by no means a feeble old man and the proof that Kosuke hadn't lost all of his strength was a balm to his soul. That his godfather was not angry with him for being too weak and too needy was a relief. He may be a Chuunin and an adult in the eyes of the law due to the hitai-ate he wore on his head but he was still just a twelve year old boy and a child at heart regardless of how much of his innocence had been stripped away by Orochimaru and the war.

Several minutes later, Kojimaru pulled back and got up so that he could help his godfather up off of the floor. He then hurried towards the back of the house to prepare Kosuke's futon so that his godfather could get some rest. Once the man was settled, Kojimaru began systematically moving through the house cleaning up the little messes around the house that would make it difficult for his godfather to move around. When he reached the kitchen, Kojimaru stood and stared at the tree for a long time as he puzzled out the best way to deal with the obstruction without revealing his Kekkei Genkai to the neighbors (few though they were) or any potential visitors that weren't in the know.

After considering all of the possibilities, he simply used a hand saw to cut the tree in half at the point of entry. The portion that was outside was then left untouched while he turned the rest of the tree into firewood by using his Mokuton to alter the width of the branches and trunk before cutting them into sections with the saw. He then stacked the resulting logs in a neat pile out on the porch at the back of the house. The other half of the tree would have to be dealt with later as he'd need to actually split the trunk by hand instead of using his Kekkei Genkai to make the tree more manageable.

The last task he took care of that night was fishing out the dead bodies of the koi from the pond so that he could bury them throughout the garden as his godfather had taught him to do so that their bodies would provide nutrients to the plants as they decomposed.

Kojimaru would be up bright and early the next morning after the first decent night's sleep he'd had since the tenth. He immediately set about making breakfast for himself and his godfather after he'd gotten dressed for the day. The twelve year old then left his godfather's meal on the electric warming plate that Kosuke had bought several years earlier. Aoba and Tenzou showed up just a few minutes later and Kojimaru scribbled out a short note to let his godfather know where he'd gone before he left the house with his teammates.

* * *

**Translations:** Japanese to English

Ansatsu Senjutsu Tokushu Butai (ANBU) – Assassination Tactics Special Military Force  
Chigau – can be used to mean wrong, no, or to differ  
Hai – yes  
Iie – no  
Kai – release  
Nani – what  
Ojisan/oji – Uncle

* * *

**11-14-15:** _Minor edits made to chapter to fix spelling/grammar mistakes and removed unnecessary author's notes._


	14. The Reassignment

**Disclaimer:** _All HP characters are the property of JKR, the WB, and respective publishing companies and all Naruto characters are the property of Masashi Kishimoto. This is nothing more than a simple FanFiction that I have written. I have made no money from this or any of the other stories I have posted on this or other sites._

**Warnings:** _Mild to moderate violence, character death, alternate universe (i.e. kiss canon goodbye), OCC behaviors and personalities, a number of original characters and obscure canon characters to flesh out family trees, random chosen last names to give a number of characters surnames, and who knows what else._

**AN:** _This story is self-beta'd; so there may be occasional grammatical or spelling errors that crop up every now and then and for those I apologize in advance._

* * *

Chapter Fourteen: The Reassignment

_July 31, 0294 AtD, 6:29 AM  
Konohagakure no Sato, Hi no Kuni_

Kojimaru rolled over onto his back and stretched out his sleep cramped muscles before he peeled open his eyes to stare up at the ceiling. A heartbeat later, he recalled exactly what day it was and his eyes lit up with excitement as he scrambled out of bed and rushed through his morning ablutions. Ever since he'd come to live with Kosuke ten and a half years ago, his godfather (and often times his friends) had taken extra care to make his birthdays something special (even if they were nothing extravagant). Today would be no exception.

As soon as he was dressed and ready, Kojimaru dashed through the house towards the kitchen where Kosuke was just pouring four cups of tea. The reason for the two extra cups became apparent the moment Kojimaru was tackled from behind by Tenzou while Aoba laughed and stepped over them as they rolled across the floor.

"No wrestling in the house," Kosuke sternly reminded the two younger boys.

"Hai, Kosuke-oji," both boys called in unison as they broke apart and climbed to their feet.

"Happy birthday, Kojimaru," Aoba stated as he ruffled the younger teen's hair before handing him a heavy package wrapped in newsprint.

"Thanks, Aoba-nii," Kojimaru replied as he grinned up at the taller boy. The gift was then set beside the handful of other gifts that were sitting on the kitchen counter before he took his seat at the table as his godfather served him his tea and his breakfast. "Thank you, ojisan."

As he ate his vegetable omelet, Kojimaru let his thoughts drift back over the past two years.

The first six months after the Kyuubi's attack had been difficult. Kojimaru had struggled to adjust to all of the changes in his life and cope with the insecurities that Kosuke's injury had stirred up on top of that. The only two things that kept him from snapping during those months were his teammates and the harsh training regime that Kasai and Ibiki had put together for their team. There wasn't a single day during that time that the three of them hadn't dragged themselves home covered in blood and bruises.

By the end of the sixth month, the hellish training sessions began paying dividends; all three of them noticing a jump in their strength, stamina, and speed on top of near doubling their chakra reserves. Their pain threshold had also increased; though to be fair, Kojimaru and Tenzou's pain tolerance had always been fairly high because of their time as part of Orochimaru's experiments. The biggest improvements that Kojimaru had made during that time had actually been in chakra control. Kasai had been brutal in beating it into him that adequate was not acceptable; the man accepting nothing less than perfection from all three of them.

The improved chakra control had in turn allowed his ninjutsu skills to blossom from dangerous to deadly since it allowed him better control over how much chakra he wasted when casting each jutsu which in turn allowed him to fight longer without the risk of killing himself with chakra exhaustion. He still couldn't use genjutsu or iryojutsu but that hardly mattered since genjutsu never quite properly worked on or for him and his internal healing ability made serious injuries far less crippling for him. The fact that all three of them had been given extensive triage training during the war also meant that the three of them could buy each other enough time to get to a hospital or medic if one of them were critically injured.

Over the next eighteen months that followed those first sixth months, Ibiki had further built on their emergency first aide skills by giving them in depth lessons on human anatomy; teaching the three of them how to inflict maximum pain without causing fatal injuries and how to numb a person's body to pain. He also taught them which nerve groups could be used to incapacitate their target by knocking them unconscious, paralyzing their muscles, or putting them into a death-like state. Once they had memorized that information, Ibiki had moved onto poisons, drugs, and antidotes; all three of which the three teens had a solid foundation in thanks to Kosuke's lessons through the years.

The last thing that Ibiki had diligently trained the newly renamed Team Kage in was genjutsu resistance. That part of their training involved the three of them being repeatedly subjected to a wide range of Ibiki's less sadistic genjutsu that targeted each of a victim's senses. And while Kojimaru had a natural resistance to genjutsu, he diligently suffered through those training sessions right alongside of Tenzou and Aoba. All three of them would quickly learn how to instinctively incorporate a constant stream of minute changes in their body's natural chakra flow in order to allow their bodies to automatically disrupt and dispel any genjutsu they encountered.

At the same time, it increased their spatial awareness and improved all of their senses which in turn made it far harder to sneak up on them (though not impossible). It also worked to improve both Aoba's and Tenzou's ability to sense chakra; both of them chakra sensors with Aoba activating his ability through extensive training while Tenzou's ability had manifested right around the same time that he had activated his Mokuton. The ability to unconsciously direct the internal flow of his chakra also gave Kojimaru's internal healing ability a boost as it allowed him to guide his ability through the healing process more efficiently in the event that he received multiple injuries (allowing him to force his healing ability to ignore minor injuries in favor of dealing with the major injuries first).

Kasai's training during that period continued to focus on their physical conditioning and working on their stealth, tracking, infiltration, and observation skills. His method of training involved sending the three of them (both as a group and individually) through an obstacle course within the ANBU Training Facility called The Gauntlet.

The course had five distinct terrains; a forest, a desert, a rocky mountainside, a grassy plain, and a swamp. Each terrain not only offered different natural obstacles that one would have to cope with but held traps geared towards one of the main five elements; fire, wind, lightning, earth, and water respectively. On top of that, there were ANBU Trainers assigned to work in each section and their job was to play the part of the enemy. The trainers were very good at their jobs; driving the trainees sent through their domain to rapid self improvement or a mental breakdown; effectively weeding out those that were ill-suited for life inside of the ANBU Corps.

Each time they were sent through the course, they were given a different goal to achieve; such as evading all of the trainers, getting through the entire course in a specific time frame, collecting a specific item hidden within one of the five sections, or capturing a specific trainer. At the end of each trial, they would be evaluated on their performance by the lead trainer for each of the five sections and occasionally by Kasai (when the Commander had time). At the end of each evaluation, they would be given a detailed list of which areas they needed to work on and an accompanying list of exercises geared towards their individual weaknesses.

At the start of their training, Kasai had Team Kage running through the gauntlet as a team once a month. By the end of their second year, he had them running through it once a week as a team and twice a month on their own. As difficult as that training was, there was no question on whether or not it was effective; all three teens now leagues above where they had been on the day of the Kyuubi's attack. They had also gained quite an impressive collection of ninjutsu to add to their arsenal.

Kojimaru had learned three new clone techniques; the Kage Bunshin no Jutsu, Doro Bunshin no Jutsu, and Mizu Bunshin no Jutsu. The doton techniques that he learned were Doryuusou no Jutsu, Doro Gaeshi, Doro Kanketsusen, Doryuudan no Jutsu, Doryuu Heki, Moguragakure no Jutsu, and Shinjuu Zanshu no Jutsu. For suiton techniques, he had learned the Hahonryuu, Haran Banshou, Mizu no Muchi, Mizu no Tatsumaki, Mizurappa, Suigadan, Suihashu, and Takitsubo no Jutsu. And lastly, the futon techniques he was taught were Dai Kamaitachi, Daitoppa no Jutsu, Fuuryuudan no Jutsu, Kazekiri no Jutsu, and Reppushou.

Tenzou had been taught the same group of jutsu, including those associated with the wind element despite the fact that he didn't have an affinity for fuuton. Aoba, on the other hand, had been taught a large collection of katon jutsu, the Kage Bunshin, and a number of other non-elemental based jutsu such as the Karasu Bunshin no Jutsu, Sanzengarasu no Jutsu, a handful of mid-level genjutsu, and several additional high level interrogation techniques.

The missions they had taken over the course of those two years were not all that much different than the missions that they had often taken during the final year of the war. The only real difference was that instead of capturing key targets for information, they were capturing civilian criminals that had a price on their head; their job being to bring in those criminals so that Konoha could claim the bounties – bringing much needed revenue into the village. They wouldn't be sent out after low level shinobi criminals until after their eighteenth month of training under Kasai and Ibiki.

Taking missions without Hayama and Tekuno had been very odd in the beginning; all three Chuunin constantly looking for the two adults and expecting them to hand out their orders. It was also rather odd to spend so much time in the village between missions; Kasai and Ibiki only giving them two or three missions per month while they'd previously taken between eight and twelve a month prior to the Kyuubi's attack (depending on the travel times involved and the duration of the mission itself). Kojimaru hadn't minded the reduction in missions though; the extra time at home had allowed him to help his godfather until the man was fully recovered.

Although, to be fair, Kosuke hadn't really needed all that much help. The man was resourceful and resilient; he was a shinobi, after all. Kojimaru knew that but that didn't mean he didn't do everything he could to make his godfather's life a little easier. And his godfather willingly allowed him to do so after seeing how much it mattered to the then pre-teen.

Once Kosuke's stump had healed completely, the old veteran had gotten the foreshortened leg measured for a prosthetic limb; he had no intention of retiring just because he'd lost a bit of his leg. Kojimaru wasn't surprised and surprisingly he wasn't worried or angry about his godfather's choice. He would have been far more worried if his godfather had given up because it would have meant that the man had lost his will to live.

The first prosthetic that Kosuke had worn had been nothing more than a wooden peg with a sleeve that attached to his stump. Kojimaru had hated that thing. Not only was the wood of an inferior quality, it was hard to balance on and openly advertised Kosuke's disability. After watching his godfather hobble around on the civilian made construct for two weeks, Kojimaru had taken a casting of his godfather's left leg and grown him a proper prosthetic based upon the resulting plaster model (creating a mirror image of Kosuke's right foot). Tenzou had then helped him create working joints for the wooden leg; the younger boy far more knowledgeable in wood crafting than Kojimaru.

Because the new prosthetic had been made from wood Kojimaru had grown, it was far denser and far stronger than ordinary wood. It was also far easier to channel chakra into; meaning that Kosuke could extend his chakra down into the prosthetic and make the wooden leg a part of his body. As soon as the prosthetic was considered perfect (which took a few tries to get the joints working smoothly), Kojimaru and Tenzou created several extras in case the original one was damaged or lost.

Not long after that, Kosuke resumed training in order to regain the mobility he'd lost when he'd been injured. Kojimaru joined him on occasion (when he wasn't exhausted beyond words by his own training regime or out on a mission). It was while they were sparring with their blades that Kojimaru came up with the idea to conceal a blade within the prosthetic limb he'd helped create. A hidden blade would be both a hidden trump card for his godfather and a backup prosthetic in the event that the wooden limb was lost or damaged in the middle of the fight and his godfather didn't have time to pull out a spare to replace it.

Kosuke had been amendable to the idea and after several weeks of trial and error, Kojimaru had forged a heavy blade that could bear Kosuke's weight. He'd then turned the prosthetic leg (and the spares) into sheaths for the blade. The only disappointing thing about the blade that Kojimaru had made (in the teen's opinion) was that it was just made from regular steel and not chakra conductive metal. Purchasing enough chakra conductive metal to forge a blade the size and weight of Kosuke's leg blade would require a small fortune though and Kosuke had told Kojimaru in no uncertain terms that he was not allowed to drain his entire savings account on something so trivial.

Kojimaru finished the last bite of his omelet and poured himself a fresh cup of mint tea as his thoughts turned from his personal life to the changes that the village had gone through over the past two years.

Right after the Kyuubi's attack, the village had been a mess and that wasn't even taking into consideration the physical destruction that had been caused by the Kyuubi's rampage. The people, as a whole, were angry and grieving. They lashed out repeatedly or curled in on themselves and wished for death. And while everyone grieved for the Yondaime Hokage, those that had lost close friends or family were quick to grow bitter and resentful of those that hadn't lost any one close. Civilians had even turned on the village's shinobi a time or two because the shinobi were no longer helping clean up the village.

Things had then taken a turn for the worse even as the overall atmosphere of the village improved when someone had leaked the name and description of the Kyuubi's new host around the six month anniversary of the attack. All of the village's hate was immediately directed at the babe. To Kojimaru, it had seemed so wrong for a child to shoulder the burden of an entire village's hate and he struggled to understand why people blamed a baby for something that had in no way been his fault.

The Sandaime had quickly tried to mitigate the fallout from the leak but the damage was already done. All he could do was to try to shield the babe from the angry mobs that demanded the child's be exiled from the village or executed. By the end of the first week, the Sandaime had gotten fed up with the animosity and created several laws that were intended to protect the child.

The first of which was to make it illegal for anyone to reveal the child's status as a Jinchuuriki to any one who did not already know. In conjunction with that law, was another making it illegal to speak about the Kyuubi's imprisonment; the official story being twisted to claim that the Yondaime had killed the demon fox instead of sealing it into a new host. The final law enacted, was one that protected the child from the more violent villagers; making it illegal for any adult to physically assault any child (normal training and sparring the only exception, providing the blows weren't excessive or abusive in nature).

Any one caught breaking any one of the new laws would be handed over to the T and I Department for questioning before they were publicly executed.

Three people would be executed in front of the entire village before the village began taking the laws seriously. And while the laws stopped people from talking about the Kyuubi, spreading word of the host's identity to the uniformed (which would mostly be those in the village under the age of five at the time of the attack and future immigrants), or actively seeking to harm the baby; they did nothing to stop the hate. By the time the second month had passed, the village as a whole (bar a small handful of individuals) had decided to ostracize little Uzumaki Naruto, Jinchuuriki of the Kyuubi (a decision that wouldn't really affect the child until he was much older).

Kojimaru felt rather upset about the entire situation. There was no way he could ever hate little Naruto for the burden he held and believed that the child should be protected but he wasn't exactly in a position to do anything about it. The fact that he was still so young meant that few people would listen to him when he admonished them for taking their anger, fear, and grief out on a single child. All he could do was prank the ignorant and keep an eye and ear out for those that broke the Sandaime's laws since his duties, training, and social circles didn't allow him to directly interact with the child or protect him from the worst of the hate.

Eventually, Uzumaki Naruto would fall into temporary obscurity as the village slowly healed and her people picked up the pieces of their shattered lives and moved on. That's not to say that Naruto was forgotten, he wasn't. It was more that people purposefully began ignoring the babe entirely; an easy feat for most people since so few people were allowed direct contact with little Naruto. Pretending that the child didn't exist for the time being was also far safer than risking a one way trip to Ibiki's domain followed by a public beheading.

The newly turned fourteen year old was pulled from his musings by his teammates exchanging his empty plate out for the small stack of presents while stealing his not quite empty cup. Kojimaru mock glared at the pair for taking his tea before he reached for the topmost gift. A quick scan of the tag revealed that it was from Tenzou and he ripped off the bright green paper to find an expertly carved teak box filled with neatly arranged seed packets for a small assortment of imported flowers, herbs, and trees whose fruit, leaves, roots, and blossoms were often used in teas and were currently not growing in his and his godfather's extensive gardens.

"Now I won't have to listen to you complain about the ridiculous prices of imported teas because you can grow and cure your own leaves, roots, petals, and berries," Tenzou quipped playfully the moment Kojimaru had glanced up from the box to thank him.

"Are you sure this wasn't just a hint that you miss my exquisite tea brewing skills?" Kojimaru countered with a smirk; there had been little time for tea over the past two years between their training and missions – something that often annoyed the artificial red head.

"Well I certainly won't miss your complaints about substandard teas," Aoba interjected as he pushed his gift closer to Kojimaru in a silent request to open that one next.

"S'not my fault so few people appreciate the delicate art of brewing tea and even fewer people are competent enough to brew a proper cup or ten," Kojimaru shot back as he obligingly tore the paper from Aoba's gift to find a pair of slate stepping stones. Kojimaru's left eye twitched as he stared down at the twin tiles before he glanced up and sarcastically stated, "Oh wow, Aoba, just what I always wanted; a matching set of stepping stones."

Aoba and Tenzou both snickered in response before Aoba replied, "I owed you for that stunt you pulled two months ago; Ibiki got all over my case because it took me a week to get all of the glow-in-the-dark paint out of my uniform. Turn the top tile over, Kojimaru; your real present is taped to the bottom."

"Hey, that wasn't my fault! I set that trap for Izumo and Kotetsu to pay them back for dumping a bucket of sticky syrup on my head when I walked into the Facility on April first," Kojimaru reminded his teammate as he flipped the top stone over and peeled the envelope from the back of the tile. After carefully ripping the edge off of the envelope, Kojimaru pulled out the contents to find a reservation slip for one of Konoha's nicer tea houses for that afternoon.

"You can invite up to six guests to attend the ceremony with you," Aoba offered before Kojimaru even finished reading the details on the slip. "I reserved one of their nicer rooms for a full two hours."

"Thanks, Aoba; the two of you will go with me right?" Kojimaru replied as he glanced between his teammates.

"Sure," Tenzou agreed without any hesitation.

"Of course," Aoba added a split second later.

"Ojisan, are you free this afternoon to join us at the Flowering Petal Tea House?"

"Wouldn't you prefer to invite some of your other friends?" Kosuke inquired after thinking about it for a moment.

"No, we've got plans to meet up with Hayama-sensei and the others at Yakiniku Q for supper; which you are welcome to join us for as well."

"What time is your reservation at the Flowering Petal?"

"Two fifteen."

"In that case, I would not mind joining you for tea this afternoon and for your party at Yakiniku Q's for supper."

Kojimaru smiled at his godfather before he turned back to his friends and asked, "Tenzou, I know Kisuke is out of town on a mission but do you think Emiko-san would like to join us?"

"I'm sure obasan would love to go," Tenzou replied with nod. "I'll ask her later this morning after our appointment with the Hokage."

"Aoba, what about your parents? Will they be able to take time off to join us?"

"Otousan probably won't want to leave the shop but okaasan would undoubtedly love to have a chance to catch up with Emiko-san," Aoba replied; the older teen referring to the small shinobi clothing store his parents owned and ran.

"We could also ask Yoshino-san if she would like to come with us; she's always complaining that Shikaku never takes her out anywhere," Kojimaru mused as he set the stepping stones on the floor beside the table and tucked the reservation slip into a zippered pocket on his flak jacket (which while far better fitting than it had been when he first got it was still a bit too big for him) so that it would not be lost. "What time is our appointment with the Hokage?"

"Eight o'clock," Aoba answered. "So you have just enough time to finish opening your presents before we have to head on over to the Hokage's tower."

Kojimaru hummed in acknowledgement as he reached out to pick up the last two presents; both of which were from his godfather. The first gift turned out to be three sets of wagashi molds; one with different shaped leaves, one with assorted blossoms, and the last one filled with fruit shaped molds. The final gift was a dessert cook book filled with an assortment of recipes for those dishes, candies, and sweets that were usually served with teas or on specific holidays. Both gifts were perfect as Kojimaru had recently developed an interest in expanding his culinary skills to include something other than just making main courses, side dishes, and one dish meals.

After thanking his godfather for the gifts, Kojimaru hurried to put his presents away and fill his canteen up with tea (mere water was for tea hating barbarians). He then said goodbye to Kosuke and hurried out the door with his teammates so they could get to the Hokage's tower a little early; they weren't exactly close enough to the Sandaime to get away with being late to a meeting like Hatake Kakashi or Yamaguchi Jiraiya could.

Kojimaru was more than a little nervous about meeting with the Hokage. It wasn't that he was frightened of the old man, though he could be very intimidating. It was that meetings with the Hokage tended to end with life altering changes that affected Kojimaru on a rather personal basis. Such as his rescue and eventual placement with Kosuke (though that was mostly Torifu's doing), his acceptance into the Shinobi Academy, his promotion to Chuunin, and the disbanding of Team Fourteen just to name a few. And while those weren't necessarily bad things (aside from taking Hayama-sensei and Tekuno away from their team); they had taken quite a bit of getting used to.

Shaking away that rather minor insecurity, Kojimaru focused his attention on the streets of Konoha as the village came to life around them. While he still didn't feel very comfortable in a crowd, he no longer felt quite as trapped as he had the first time he'd laid eyes upon the village; even if he did go out of his way to avoid being touched by strangers. He had even learned to enjoy watching people as they went about their business over the past two years through his lessons in observation with Kasai and Ibiki. There was so much a shinobi could learn about a person just by looking at them.

By the time they reached the Hokage's Tower at the base of the Hokage Mountain roughly twenty-three minutes later, Kojimaru was feeling rather relaxed as his earlier excitement returned. It was his birthday, after all, and he wasn't going to let anything get him down. Not when he had a professional tea ceremony to look forward to that afternoon.

They had barely settled onto the stiff chairs that filled the small lobby outside of the Hokage's office when the Hokage's Chuunin secretary indicated that the Hokage would see them now. Climbing back to their feet, the trio took a moment to straighten up their uniforms (which consisted of the basic dark blue shinobi shirt and pants and green flack jacket) before they approached the Hokage's office. As the oldest member of their team, Aoba was volunteered to go first when Tenzou and Kojimaru gave him a push forward at the last second.

After giving the two younger teens a mock glare, the seventeen year old knocked sharply on the door before he walked into the office. Kojimaru resisted the urge to snicker in response a second later as he passed through the door at the same time as Tenzou. His amusement fled an instant later when he noticed that Shikaku, Ibiki, and Kasai were all present as well and his earlier anxiety returned with a vengeance as he wondered again why the Hokage had called for Team Kage.

"Good morning, gentlemen; I appreciate your promptness this morning," the Sandaime intoned the moment the three of them had lined up in front of his desk. "Since I am certain that at least one of you has plans for the day, considering what day it is, I will try to keep our meeting brief and to the point. I will start by saying that I was very impressed with the growth that the three of you have displayed over the past two years; all three of you exceeded the expectations I had formed based upon what I'd read in your files two years ago."

"Part of that, I'm sure, was strictly due to Shirakumo Hayama down playing your abilities during the six years you'd spent under his captaincy. That isn't necessarily a bad thing; since it did keep the three of you out of the spotlight for the most part. In fact, the three of you have somehow managed to keep yourselves from being noticed by more than two thirds of the shinobi villages currently in existence. Not even a single Bingo Book entry turned up for a single one of you and knowing what I do of both your abilities and your mission record now; that is an impressive feat indeed."

"And that leads us to the reason why I called the three of you to my office today," the Sandaime continued after he'd given the three of them a moment to digest the first half of his speech. "There are currently a limited number of vacancies within the ANBU Corps that I would like to have filled. There are also a couple of positions within the T and I Department that recently opened up. And while normally, I would assign your team as a whole to one department or the other; that is not a possibility at this time due to the number of other applicants for both departments that have seniority over the three of you."

"You're going to split us up," Kojimaru blurted out as he felt his stomach tie itself up in knots.

"Yes," the Sandaime confirmed without blinking an eye at the interruption. "Two of you will be going to one department and the other one will go to the other. I will leave it up to the three of you to decide which two will stay together and which department the pair will be assigned to."

The three teammates and brothers in all but name glanced at one another briefly before Aoba declared, "Kojimaru and Tenzou can stay together; I'll also volunteer to join the T and I Department since my training has been more focused on interrogation while their skills are more geared towards capture and retrieval."

"Aoba…!?" Kojimaru half-heartedly protested.

"It's fine, otouto; I've always known that the two are far closer to each other than either of you are to me. I'm just thankful that we were able to stay together as long as we have and that the two of you accepted me as part of your adopted families. Both of you will always be my little brothers and we'll still be able to hang out together on our days off. And, I won't have to worry about the two of you getting into too much trouble because I know that the two of you will have each other's backs. Consider this an extra birthday present for the both of you."

"Thanks, niisan; that means a lot to us," Tenzou quietly stated in Kojimaru's place since the artificial redhead had been struck speechless by Aoba's short speech.

"Is that your final decision?" the Sandaime inquired after the short exchange between the trio of Chuunin.

"Hai, Hokage-sama," all three boys replied; though Kojimaru's voice was filled with far less conviction than those of the other two.

"Very well, Chuunin Yamashiro; you'll need to report to the T and I Facility at eight sharp tomorrow morning where Ibiki will fill you in on your duties. Chuunin Kojimaru and Tenzou; the two of you will need to report to the ANBU Facility at seven sharp this evening where you will join the rest of the potential recruits."

"Expect to be out of contact with your friends and families for the entire month of August," Kasai warned in an ominous tone. "You may pack as much or as little as you think you will need but once you arrive, you will not be allowed to leave the facility for any reason until the thirty-first."

"Wakarimasu, Kasai-sama," Tenzou replied while Kojimaru simply nodded an acknowledgement.

"Do you have any questions?" the Sandaime asked after a moment and all three teens shook their head no. "Then you are dismissed."

Kojimaru bowed reflexively before he woodenly walked out the door on the heels of his teammates; or rather, former teammate in Aoba's case. Part of Kojimaru wanted be angry with the Hokage for splitting them up once again but it didn't take a genius to know that the man made the decision he made for the good of the village as a whole; not just the good of a single shinobi or team. It helped that he'd grown up a lot over the past two years and while he could still technically be considered a child, he rarely ever acted like one anymore (barring the times when he was at home where he felt safe enough to let his guard down completely or when he played the occasional prank for fun rather than for retribution).

"All that and not a one single one of them even bothered to wish you a happy birthday," Tenzou commented out of the blue as they left the tower three minutes later.

"Shikaku will probably say something later and I seriously doubt that Ibiki, Kasai, or the Hokage even remembered that today is my birthday," Kojimaru murmured in reply. "It's not like the three of us are all that important in the grand scheme of things anyway."

"Wow, talk about killjoy," Aoba snarked as he slapped Kojimaru upside the back of the head. "Don't be such a whiney pessimist. They had to have known it was your birthday today; otherwise the Hokage wouldn't have said anything about us having a busy day planned. Now, shall we split up so we can each invite a beautiful woman to our afternoon tea ceremony or are we just going to mope around all day?"

"Hai, kaasan," Kojimaru fired back before he twisted out of reach of the older teen's longer reach.

"Gaki!"

"You'll ask Yoshino-san if she'd like to attend the ceremony?" Tenzou asked Kojimaru around a chuckle.

"Hai. Meet you both back at my house in an hour?"

"Hai," Aoba and Tenzou replied in stereo.

The three of them split up a few seconds later and Kojimaru made a beeline for the Nara Estate. Yoshino didn't even let the poor Chuunin finish asking her if she'd like to attend the tea ceremony before she was agreeing. The woman had then collected Shikamaru (Shikaku and Yoshino's two year old son) and handed him over to Kojimaru before shutting the door in the teen's face so that she could get ready. Kojimaru had shared a single glance with his godson (Shikaku had sprung that little surprise on him on the little tyke's first birthday; a year after the paperwork had been filed – lazy damn Nara) before he declared all women troublesome and hauled Shikamaru home.

At least he'd have a few hours in which to corrupt his godson in order to drive his former babysitter crazy.

In the Hokage's office, Shikaku felt a foreboding shiver race up his spine.

* * *

**Translations:** Japanese to English

Doton – earth  
Futon – wind  
Gaki – brat  
Hai – yes  
Katon – fire  
Ojisan/oji – uncle  
Okaasan/kaasan – mother  
Oniisan/niisan/nii – Older brother  
Otousan/tousan – father  
Otouto – little brother  
Raiton – lightning  
Suiton – water  
Wakarimasu – I understand (formal – present tense)

**Techniques: **

Dai Kamaitachi - Great Cutting Whirlwind  
Doro Bunshin no Jutsu – Mud Clone Technique  
Doro Gaeshi – Mud Overturn  
Doro Kanketsusen – Mud Geyser  
Doryuudan no Jutsu – Earth Dragon Projectile  
Doryuu Heki – Earth Style Wall  
Doryuusou no Jutsu – Earthen Rising Spears  
Daitoppa no Jutsu – Great Breakthrough (large destructive blast of wind)  
Fuuryuudan no Jutsu – Wind Dragon Projectile Technique (non-canon Wind Dragon)  
Hahonryuu – Destruction Torrent  
Haran Banshou – Stormy Upheaval  
Kage Bunshin no Jutsu – Shadow Clone  
Karasu Bunshin no Jutsu – Crow Clone Technique  
Kazekiri no Jutsu – Wind Cutter Technique  
Mizu Bunshin no Jutsu – Water Clone Technique  
Mizu no Muchi – Whip of Water  
Mizu no Tatsumaki – Tornado of Water  
Mizurappa – Violent Water Wave  
Moguragakure no Jutsu – Mole Hiding Technique  
Reppushou – Gale Wind Palm  
Sanzengarasu no Jutsu – Scattering One Thousand Crows Technique  
Shinjuu Zanshu no Jutsu – Double Suicide Decapitation Technique  
Shunshin no Jutsu – Body Flicker Technique  
Suigadan – Water Fang Projectile  
Suihashu – Water Wave Hand  
Takitsubo no Jutsu – Waterfall Basin Technique

**Notes: **

Presents – it has recently been brought to my attention that one typically doesn't open presents in front of the person giving said presents in Japanese culture, though I'm not certain of the exact reasons why or if that applies to immediate family as well as friends, relatives, and what not. At the time I had originally written this chapter I had not been aware of that little factoid.

That said, I will not be going back to re-write that section of this story since I would lose a decent chunk of the chapter and I really don't feel like straining my brain to do so. I guess you could consider the small-group present opening a western influence (from where I don't know). I'll try not to have anyone opening presents in front of strangers or the giver unless it is immediate family but keep in mind that Kojimaru, Tenzou, &amp; Aoba consider each other family at this point since they've been together for eight years and have repeatedly faced death together.

* * *

**11-14-15:** _Minor edits made to chapter to fix spelling/grammar mistakes and removed unnecessary author's notes._


	15. The Initiation

**Disclaimer:** _All HP characters are the property of JKR, the WB, and respective publishing companies and all Naruto characters are the property of Masashi Kishimoto. This is nothing more than a simple FanFiction that I have written. I have made no money from this or any of the other stories I have posted on this or other sites._

**Warnings:** _Mild to moderate violence, character death, alternate universe (i.e. kiss canon goodbye), OCC behaviors and personalities, a number of original characters and obscure canon characters to flesh out family trees, random chosen last names to give a number of characters surnames, and who knows what else._

**AN:** _This story is self-beta'd; so there may be occasional grammatical or spelling errors that crop up every now and then and for those I apologize in advance._

* * *

Chapter Fifteen: The Initiation

_July 31, 0294 AtD, 6:49 PM  
Konohagakure no Sato, Hi no Kuni_

"Well, I guess this is where I leave the two of you," Aoba stated as the three of them reached the top of the Hokage Mountain where the ANBU Facility sat. "I'll hold down the fort out here until they let you out for parole at the end of the month."

"Good luck with your training; Ibiki's going to be a monster without us there to loosen him up with a few pranks every now and then," Tenzou offered in reply; the cheerfulness in his voice slightly forced.

"I've got that covered; I made a deal with Kotetsu and Izumo after I won their next two paychecks off of them in our poker game earlier tonight. I told them I'd forgive them their debt if they pranked Ibiki at least once a day for the next month."

"Ibiki's gonna slaughter them," Tenzou snorted as he shook his head and chuckled over the imminent demise of the two pranksters (whose reputations as pranksters far exceeded that of the two self-claimed brothers – but that was only because they got caught in the act more often than Kojimaru and Tenzou).

"Only if he catches them and they are almost as good at getting away with their pranks as the two of you," Aoba countered before he glanced at Kojimaru. "You're being awfully quiet, Kojimaru."

Kojimaru just shrugged his shoulders; he'd not really felt much like talking since the sun had set. There was a time when his silence would have annoyed Aoba; the older boy had thought it was a personal slight against him until he got to know the shortest member of their team better. Seeing Kojimaru give everyone the silent treatment for little to no reason every now and again had quickly taught the older teen that the silence was just a quirk of the artificial redhead. The thing that threw most people for a loop was the fact that Tenzou could accurately read Kojimaru's mood and body language and in effect accurately answer questions directed at the artificial redhead or interpret his various shrugs, grunts, and gestures.

"He's nervous, so he's brooding again; Kojimaru hates change," Tenzou answered blithely as he discreetly glanced at his watch to check the time. "As much as we'd love to stick around and kill another hour or two with you, we'd better get going be we wind up late and Kasai strings us up by our balls and uses us for target practice."

"Take care you two and give the other applicants hell."

"Will do," Tenzou promised while Kojimaru simply nodded.

The two fourteen year olds (or near fourteen year old in Tenzou's case) reluctantly left Aoba standing at the top of the stairs as they made their way to the formidable building that housed the ANBU Facility. Like the Hokage's Compound below, the ANBU Building was woven over with so many protective and defensive barriers that the thrum of chakra in the air gave it a foreboding air. After two years of exposure to the barriers, Kojimaru and Tenzou mostly ignored the ominous feeling they generated as they opened the door and stepped inside. They were met just inside of the lobby by Kasai.

"Good, you're both early. From this point forward, the two of you will need to drop your disguises the moment that you step foot inside of this building or when you are in uniform and at no point are you to refer to one another by your real names while you are inside this building or wearing your masks. If you survive the next month, you will be given a code name; until then, you will be known as applicants seven-four-seven and seven-four-eight. Do I make myself clear?"

"Hai, Kasai-sama," Tenzou replied emotionlessly while Kojimaru nodded as their disguises melted away on the heels of a silent release; the two of them trying not to let their discomfort over being given numbers as names show.

"Good; go ahead and make your way to the lecture hall where you will be issued a blank mask and a training kit."

The two teens bowed to the man before they complied with the instructions. By the time they had navigated through the maze of tunnels to reach the lecture hall, the two Chuunin had buried their discomfort over being issued identification numbers (no matter how temporary they were) and over having their natural faces currently bared. The latter wasn't that big of a deal, since they'd never worn their simple disguises when they used their Kekkei Genkai out in the open around the village. It was just odd to not have a porcelain mask covering their faces like they had previously and even then they would have those masks soon enough.

Being called a number again though, that bothered them more than they would care to admit. They had put most of their past behind them but there were some things that still affected them; such as being stripped of their identities and being assigned a number to take the place of their names. The only reason that they didn't protest was the knowledge that all applicants were assigned numbers until they earned their code name and the numbers were meant to further protect their identities in the mean time.

As soon as they reached the lecture hall, an ANBU Guard wearing a deer mask handed them scrolls with their applicant numbers on them and told them to select a blank mask from the table. Unlike the previous blank masks they'd used through the years (which were nothing more than featureless masks that covered their faces), the masks laid out on the table were shaped like animal faces. Kojimaru automatically reached out to snag the only cat mask on the table while Tenzou selected the bear mask. As soon as their selections had been made, they were instructed to put on their new masks and go change into their new uniforms.

Ten minutes later, they were seated side by side in the front row of tiered desks that filled the hall. Scattered about behind them were another eight applicants all wearing the same exact uniform as the two fourteen year olds. Each uniform consisted of a sleeveless black shirt with attached face mask, black elbow length gloves with metal plates on the back of the hand, black cargo pants, black shinobi sandals, and pale gray armor consisting of shin guards, arm guards, a chest plate, and a back plate. Aside from the shape of their masks, the color of their hair, and the obvious differences in height and weight, all of the applicants looked exactly the same.

Another twenty-six applicants would join them before Kasai and two ANBU Captains entered the room. Kojimaru felt a shiver of dread dance down his spine as Kasai swept his gaze over the thirty-six applicants that had gathered in the room. There was something predatory in the masked commander's gaze tonight and it made the fourteen year old wish that he was any where else but in that lecture hall.

"Welcome to hell, rookies," Kasai ominously stated as he clasped his hands behind his back while the two captains with him locked the doors with blood seals. "Those of you that survive the night will be tested to see if you have what it takes to join the ANBU Corps while the bodies of those who don't will be hauled out with the rest of the trash in the morning."

The two friends had only two seconds to share a horrified glanced before the room was plunged into darkness. Kojimaru instinctively latched onto Tenzou's arm and pulled the two of them down to the floor where they immediately merged with the wooden floors as the sounds of fighting broke out all around them. They disappeared just in the nick of time as a pair of masked shinobi dropped down onto the desks they'd been sitting at just seconds earlier; both ANBU operatives had lain in wait on the ceiling above them with the rest of the attacking shinobi.

There was no time for them to stop and think as their would-be ambushers attacked the floor with their swords and channeled a paralyzing raiton attack into the wood. Only the fact that wood was non-conductive by nature had spared the two teens from the full brunt of the attack as they traveled away from their attackers through the floor. Most of the night would be spent playing cat and mouse as their masked pursuers diligently chased them through the room. One of Tenzou's Moku Bunshin bought them just enough time around three in the morning to allow them to figure out that one of their attackers was tracking them through their chakra signature.

Armed with that knowledge, Kojimaru flooded the entire floor with his chakra while Tenzou continued to distract the pair with an assortment of clones. As soon as they were no longer being hounded every time they turned around, they turned the tables on their attackers as the floor rose up to attack them in return. Working together, the two Mokuton users quickly wrapped up their pursuers and half buried them in the floor in order to prevent them from getting free. The two self-adopted brothers then used the breathing space they'd bought each other to tend to the injuries that they'd incurred during the course of the night – or rather, Kojimaru tended Tenzou's injuries since his were already most healed.

Their break would be rather short lived as four more masked guards began hunting them the moment the other guards realized that two of their number had been incapacitated. The two young Chuunin would gamely counter every attack sent their way while trying to catch their opponents in the floor like they had the first two. And while they were no longer being forced to flee like rabbits, they also weren't able to subdue their four attackers as easily as they had the first two.

By the time the lights came back on at exactly six in the morning, Kojimaru and Tenzou were both exhausted. The only solace they had was the fact that their attackers were not in much better shape. As the two fourteen year olds collapsed against each other and glanced about the room, they found that aside from themselves, only ten other applicants had actually made it through the night. The rest of the applicants had disappeared completely. They would later learn that those that had failed the ambush had actually just been knocked unconscious and had their memories of the night sealed; not killed as Kasai had implied they would be at the start of the attack.

"Congratulations on surviving the night," Kasai intoned as swept his gaze over the mess that Kojimaru and Tenzou had made of the floor; his eyes lingering on the two masked shinobi that were still half buried in the floor (which they were promptly ordered to repair with a silent hand signal from Kasai). Several of the rookies cheered over that proclamation and slumped in relief only for them to tense back up when Kasai continued the moment Kojimaru finished fixing their mess (Tenzou too exhausted to help).

"Don't start celebrating just yet; we've not yet finished threshing the chaff from the grain. There are only five positions available within the Corps and there are twelve of you. We know you can survive an ambush but now we will see just how well you can face your fears."

That was all the warning they were given before the world went dark once more as all twelve applicants were knocked unconscious by a blow to the back of the neck from the full fledged ANBU Guards that they'd stopped paying attention to the moment the lights had been turned on.

Kojimaru would wake up roughly half an hour later to find himself sealed inside of a snug metal box. Worse than that though was the fact that he was alone. It was a good thing that he didn't suffer from claustrophobia or he would have panicked the moment he realized just how little space there was inside of his prison. And while the box was sealed shut, it wasn't airtight; Kojimaru could sense the shifting air currents. Getting out of the box was as simple as using the Hyouton to find the cracks in its construction and growing enough ice to force the lid to curl open.

The young Chuunin then sat up and got his first look at the room he'd ended up in and descended into a brief panic the moment he recognized it as the lab room where Orochimaru had kept him for two agonizing years. He could even smell the scent of old blood and bleach lingering in the room and he nearly threw up as he was assaulted by a flood old and partially disjointed memories. It was only his concern for the missing Tenzou that allowed him to beat back the panic that was clawing at the back of his mind.

Once he had subdued the old fear of finding himself in Orochimaru's clutches once more, Kojimaru began to notice little things that were off about the room he was in. First was the fact that all of the surgical implements scattered about the room were rusted and coated with a thick layer of dust and cobwebs; an indication that no one had used the room in years. The second was that the room was undamaged beneath the dust; the damage that had occurred when his Hyouton and Mokuton were activated completely absent.

Conclusion; this wasn't the lab room where Orochimaru had kept him.

But the room was undoubtedly within the same building because of the similarities. Unless someone had gone through the trouble of recreating the lab just to mess with his mind; a distinct, if slight, possibility based upon what he had learned about Kasai over the past two years. It was at that moment that Kojimaru recalled Kasai saying something about the new applicants facing their fears just before he'd been knocked out.

"Sadistic bastard did this on purpose," Kojimaru muttered under his breath as the knowledge that this was part of a test helped him clear away the last of his fear. "I wonder if that means that all of the other applicants are here was well or if it is just me and potentially Te… my brother that got stuck in this scenario. Only one way to find out, I guess."

And with that, Kojimaru climbed the rest of the way out of his metal prison before he crossed the room to merge himself with the wooden door that was the only point of entrance in the room in order to slip out the other side without needing to bother picking the lock. He then began ghosting along the hallway, taking the time to poke his head through each door (literally, as he didn't even bothering opening them whether they were locked or not) in order to search the room beyond for any sign of the other applicants but most especially for the missing Tenzou.

After the first ten empty rooms, Kojimaru created several Moku Bunshin out of a scattering of twigs he picked up off of the ground to help him search while he moved deeper into the underground lab; his curiosity grabbing hold of him as he'd never seen any parts of the lab outside of the room he'd been imprisoned in. A smirk slowly made its way onto the teen's face behind his porcelain mask; the abandoned lab was the perfect setting for the ultimate ghost story. The smile turned quickly morphed into a grimace as it occurred to him that the lab's true history was far more tragic than the spine tingling stories that he and Tenzou had read or made up through the years.

After all, Orochimaru had tortured and murdered dozens of innocent children in the many rooms that littered the old laboratory; all for the sake of his wretched Kekkei Genkai experiments.

Kojimaru stopped walking and bowed his head as he clenched his fists while he wondered if he and Tenzou were really the lucky ones or if those children that had not survived were actually the lucky ones. After all, the dead feel no pain. The Chuunin frowned and shook his head as he realized that despite how much he had suffered and how much of that suffering he still remembered, he did not regret his life. Sure, his life had been far from perfect but at the same time it had been the perfect life in his mind.

How could it not be when his life had given him a new family to replace the one he'd lost as a child?

True peace and contentment filled Kojimaru for the first time as the fear and anger he'd held buried deep inside of him (with the help of Torifu's seal) for over ten years withered to nearly nothing. He still hated Orochimaru but the deep seated resentment he'd held for the traitorous third of the Sannin was gone; as was his burning thirst to get revenge. He would never even consider thanking the man for what he'd done but he had at least come to terms with what had been done to him. In some ways, the Snake Summoner had gifted him with two tools that were invaluable; his Kekkei Genkai.

Feeling far better, Kojimaru began whistling a lively tune as he continued to explore the underground laboratory. He had just reached a slightly decrepit training room when the floor beneath him exploded in a shower of clay tiles and dirt as a masked Tenzou burst out of the ground.

"Your clones are annoying as hell," Tenzou complained as he gave Kojimaru the stink eye through his mask. "I've been chasing them all over the damn place trying to track down the original you."

"I sent them hunting for you not long after I realized where I'd been dumped," Kojimaru explained with a shrug. "I was actually hoping to find a kitchen so that I could make some tea and fix something to eat."

"How can you stand being here?"

"Because this place is just a relic of the past and there is nothing here to fear. We have a life outside of what that man did to us and I would not change a damn thing that was done to us if it meant losing you, ojisan, sensei, our niisan, and the other friends that we've made through the years. What about you? Does being here bother you?"

"Yes… but I am not afraid. I was angry that they split us up and locked us up here. I was also worried that you would be far more bothered by being here than you are because I know that you remember far more of what was done to us than I do."

"I was, at first, but I did a lot of thinking as I explored the lab and looked for you. Come on, let's clean up the mess you made and clean this room up a bit so I can make us something to eat; I'm starving."

The pair of them would be found eating freshly made curry and drinking tea in an abandoned training room an hour later by Kasai and both of the ANBU Captains that had turned up with him the evening before. Despite the masks covering their faces, it was very obvious to both teens that all three individuals were rather surprised to find the pair acting as if they were merely on a camping trip instead of being dropped into the middle of what should have been (by all reports) their worst nightmares.

"Would the three of you care to join us?" Tenzou inquired as he gestured to the half full pot of curry. "There is more than enough for all of you."

Kojimaru laughed silently and smirked beneath his mask when Kasai slapped a hand over his masked face in response to Tenzou's offer. He was actually a little surprised when the captain wearing a goat mask casually dropped down beside them almost immediately. Kojimaru nodded to the captain and silently dished up a plate of curry for the man before he poured out another cup of tea. The other captain (who wore the mask of an ox) actually let out a snort of amusement before he too joined the group on the ground.

Kasai let out a soft growl and stomped off in irritation instead; something that had further amused the two teens.

* * *

_August 29, 0294 AtD, 4:53 PM  
Konohagakure no Sato, Hi no Kuni_

Kojimaru suppressed the urge to fidget as he stood in line with the other six applicants that had survived the month of hell that Kasai, Yagi (the goat masked captain), and Ushi (the ox masked captain) had put them through. The rest of the applicants had either been kicked out for one reason or another or they'd dropped out themselves when the endless testing that they were being subjected to became too much for them. Kojimaru and Tenzou had both weathered the harsh tests fairly easily; thanks to the previous two years of grueling training under Kasai and Ibiki's tutelage.

The reason for Kojimaru's current anxiety had nothing to do with their tests though; the last of the tests had officially ended just twenty-three minutes earlier. No, the reason why the fourteen year old was nervous had to do with the fact that two of the applicants would be sent packing any minute now; there were only five available spaces within the ranks of the ANBU Corps, after all. Kojimaru still worried that he and Tenzou would be split up; either because one of them was dropped from the program or because they were placed on two separate teams.

"The seven of you have shown remarkable perseverance over the last thirty days," Kasai stated as he glanced at the seven applicants. "It usually takes me two periods of open enrollment to fill the holes created within the ANBU Corps each year through death and retirement. Unfortunately, there are still two too many of you left. After reviewing everyone's performance from this past month, I will be dropping applicants seven-five-two and seven-six-one from the program. If, at any time in the next six months, an opening becomes available; the two of you will have an opportunity to join the ranks. After those six months have passed, you will need to reapply the next time we have positions that need to be filled if you are still interested in joining the Corps."

Once those two applicants had been escorted from the room by the deer masked ANBU member that had greeted all of the applicants upon their arrival that first night (to get their memories of the past month sealed), Kasai addressed the five remaining applicants once more, "Congratulations; the five of you are officially the Corps' newest rookies. You will be spending the next six months learning the ins and outs of your new position before you are officially assigned to a team. I will be leaving you in the capable hands of Captains Yagi and Ushi now; they will be over seeing all aspects of your training."

"This way, rookies," Yagi instructed as he headed for the exit. "We will be setting each of you up with a private room in the ANBU Barracks where you will store your uniform when you are not on duty. Your rooms will also be your entrance and exit point from this moment forward to help prevent anyone from discovering your identity under the mask as you come and go from the building."

The five new rookies were then led several floors down to a part of the facility that Kojimaru and Tenzou had never been allowed into on prior visits (neither one of them aware that Torifu had housed them within the barracks after he'd separated them the night he'd faked their deaths). Once they reached the last level, the rookies were split up into two groups; with Yagi leading Kojimaru and Tenzou off to the right while Ushi took the other three to the left. Eventually, the two of them were led to a pair of doors that were directly across from one another at the very end of the hallway.

"Here we are," Yagi needlessly stated as he gestured to the doors. "Seven-four-seven, your room is on the left which leaves seven-four-eight's room on the right. Both rooms have privacy barriers on them to insure that no one aside from you, me, Kasai, and your future teichou (once you've been assigned to a team) will be able to open the doors once the seals have been fully activated. All you need to do to activate the wards, is spread a bit of your blood onto the master seals located on the back of the door and channel your chakra into the seal."

"Normally, this is the point where I warn the new rookies under my care to never key another person outside of their future captain into the barriers on their rooms but Kasai-sama warned me that the two of you are rather stubborn and that you both are already fully aware of your hidden identities. He then suggested that I explain how to key another person into the seals in order to prevent the two of you from experimenting on your own."

"There are two methods that you can use; the first one requires you to activate the seals first before you smear an ounce of the other's blood onto the master seal and channel more of your chakra into the array in order to incorporate their blood into the seal. That is the method that you will use to add your future teichou into the security barrier. The second method, and the method that I suggest the two of you use, is for you two activate the barriers one at a time together. To do so, you will both need to smear your blood on the seals and channel your chakra into the seals at the same time."

"Using the second method will allow both of you to control the barriers on both rooms and make it harder for someone else to come along and remove your access to each other's room; something that would have nasty repercussions if you were not aware that you were no longer keyed into the barriers and you attempted to enter the room. The barriers are not kind to those that attempt to break into them because we take the safety and security of our members seriously."

"Do either of you have any questions?" Yagi asked once he'd finished his explanation.

"Will we be adding you and the commander into the wards using the first method?" Tenzou inquired after briefly glancing in Kojimaru's direction.

"No, Kasai-sama already keyed us into the seals using a different method that is only taught to the ANBU Commander (who has access to every single room in the facility). Please don't ask me what that method is because I do not know. Did you have any other questions? No…? Then I shall leave you to get settled in for the night. Supper will be served in the mess hall at six. You will need to report back to the lecture hall at six sharp tomorrow morning for your orientation."

The masked Yagi then disappeared in a swirl of smoke and Kojimaru sighed before he glanced over at Tenzou and asked, "Your room first?"

Tenzou nodded after a moment and opened the door on the right side of the hall so that the two of them could enter the room together. They immediately took the time to inspect the room before dealing with the barrier activation.

The room was small, seven feet deep, five feet wide, and the ceiling seven feet above the floor. The door opened on the left side of the room and immediately to the right of the door stood a five foot tall, one foot deep, and two foot wide locker inside which were a couple of shelves (one near the top and one near the bottom) and a clothes rod (complete with two dozen built in hangers). On the bottom shelf there was a folded futon, two blankets, one sheet, two pillow cases, and a thin pillow all in light gray. Right beside the locker was a small desk with a single drawer beneath the top that held various writing supplies and blank mission report forms and a metal chair that looked rather uncomfortable.

On the wall opposite the doorway, was a toilet and a small one-person shower. Recessed into the wall beside the shower (on the same wall the shower and desk sat against) was a built-in medicine cabinet that held a medical kit, an assortment of over the counter remedies, unscented toiletries (soap, shampoo, conditioner, mouth wash, toothpaste, body lotion, deodorant, styling gel, and shaving cream), a hair brush, a toothbrush, and a razor. Directly below the cabinet was a towel rack holding two large towels, two small hand towels, and two face clothes all in light gray. The only decorations in the room was the absorbent light gray rug sitting in front of the shower, a framed poster of the Hokage Monument above the desk, the small desk lamp sitting on top of the desk, and a two foot wide full length mirror beside the locker.

"Cozy," Kojimaru drawled sarcastically once he finished assessing the room.

"Quite," Tenzou agreed as he gave the metal chair a light kick that told Kojimaru that his brother was already planning to replace the offending piece of furniture with a proper wooden one (self grown, naturally). "Shall we activate the seal so we can see if your room is as luxurious as mine?"

"Might as well," Kojimaru agreed with a grimace of distaste that was entirely due to the need for them to use their blood in the activation process.

Ten minutes later, they were sitting on the floor in the middle of Kojimaru's room (which was the mirror image of Tenzou's room – except he had a framed poster of Konoha's main gates) as Kojimaru heated a kettle of water over a small fire that had been made inside of a portable grill. The companionable silence that had settled over the two of them would be broken just a minute later by the shrill whistle of steam escaping the kettle. Kojimaru deftly removed the kettle from the heat and quickly set about preparing a pot of tea; his movements filled with the graceful economy born from ten years of practice in the art of brewing tea.

The last of the tension that filled the shorter of the two fourteen year olds evaporated the moment the first sip of tea passed through his lips. The soothing taste of peppermint filled Kojimaru's mouth as he savored that first sip for several minutes before allowing the liquid to slide down his throat. He closed his eyes a moment later as he took a second, larger sip and savored it just as long as he had the first drink. The silence would stretch out for another twenty minutes before Tenzou finally broke the silence.

"How much longer do you think they will keep us here?"

"At least one more night, possibly two," Kojimaru replied after a brief moment.

"You don't think they will keep us here for the entire duration of our training?"

"No, it would be far too noticeable if we both disappeared for six months. A single month in here isn't that big of a deal since we've both taken missions that were roughly four weeks long in the past because of the travel times involved."

"I hadn't considered that. What kind of training do you think they will give us aside from teaching us the new rules and regulations well need to follow?"

"Probably the same thing we were doing as Team Kage," Kojimaru guessed as he shrugged his shoulders.

Tenzou hummed in agreement before the two of them finished their tea in silence. As soon as the last drop of tea had been drunk, the two teens replaced their masks and exited the room to join the rest of those ANBU Operatives still in the building for the evening meal in the mess hall.

* * *

**Translations:** Japanese to English

Hai – yes  
Ushi – cow/ox  
Yagi – goat

* * *

**11-15-15:** _Minor edits made to chapter to fix spelling/grammar mistakes and removed unnecessary author's notes._


	16. The Perks

**Disclaimer:** _All HP characters are the property of JKR, the WB, and respective publishing companies and all Naruto characters are the property of Masashi Kishimoto. This is nothing more than a simple FanFiction that I have written. I have made no money from this or any of the other stories I have posted on this or other sites._

**Warnings:** _Mild to moderate violence, character death, alternate universe (i.e. kiss canon goodbye), OCC behaviors and personalities, a number of original characters and obscure canon characters to flesh out family trees, random chosen last names to give a number of characters surnames, and who knows what else._

**AN:** _This story is self-beta'd; so there may be occasional grammatical or spelling errors that crop up every now and then and for those I apologize in advance._

* * *

Chapter Sixteen: The Perks

_August 30, 0294 AtD, 5:48 AM  
Konohagakure no Sato, Hi no Kuni_

Kojimaru silently paced alongside of Tenzou as the two of them made their way to the lecture hall once more. In no time at all, the two of them were once again standing outside of the lecture hall where they once again found themselves facing the deer masked guard that had given them their uniforms and masks that first day. This time, the man handed them each a Regulation Handbook, the most recent edition of Konoha's Bingo Book, and the updated Bounty Book (the civilian version of the Bingo Book that was published by the Fire Daimyou's shogun). They were then told to select a bottle of mask paint from the table beside the man; both of them automatically grabbing a bottle of orange paint – the only color that had more than one bottle present.

The two of them were then waved into the room where they took the same two seats that they had used that first day. As soon as his butt slid onto the chair, Kojimaru opened up the Bingo Book he'd been handed and began thumbing through its pages. During the past two years, Team Kage had frequently used the Bingo Books stored with the ANBU Division's Library to research their mission targets but because they were only Chuunin at the time and not officially part of the ANBU Corps, they had never before been allowed to own an actual copy of the book. The reason for that was to keep the extensive collection of data recorded in the books out of the hands of their enemies – meaning that only the highest ranked shinobi were granted copies.

Bingo Books were one of the most frequently stolen shinobi tools because of the information they held; each village even had trained spies whose sole job was strictly to acquire each village's most recently published Bingo Book or to acquire stolen copies of their village's Bingo Book.

The book itself was close to three inches thick, quite heavy, and packed with a wealth of information on hundreds of shinobi from all over the world. The first quarter of the book contained the dossiers on those Konoha shinobi that had gone missing within the last two decades; most of them presumed dead. The second quarter of the book contained the dossiers for those shinobi that had turned traitor to the village. The third quarter was reserved for the dossiers on the enemies of Konoha. And the very last quarter of the book was then dedicated to a list of known missing nin from other villages.

Kojimaru inevitably froze when he reached Orochimaru's page in the book; his eyes locked on the Sannin's photo. Old memories played through his mind as he stared at the smug smirk that the cruel man wore; just like they had when he'd woken up back in the lab at the start of the month. Several long minutes passed by in the blink of an eye and Kojimaru never noticed because of how wrapped up he was in the past. He was jolted from his memories when Tenzou reached over and deliberately shut the book for him. Jumping slightly at the unexpected interference, Kojimaru snapped his gaze to the side.

"Yagi-teichou is here," Tenzou stated simply as he tilted his head towards the front of the room.

"So nice of you to join us, rookie," Yagi sarcastically greeted the moment Kojimaru turned to glance in his direction and the fourteen year old flushed bright red beneath his mask. "Now that I have your undivided attention, we'll get started. First, Kasai-sama has given me your new code names; seven-four-seven, you will from this point forward be known as Tora while you are in uniform. Seven-four-eight, you have been given the name Kuma. Next, allow me introduce you to Sumi; he will be applying your ANBU tattoos and painting your masks for you. Once he has finished with the two of you, I will give you a full tour of the facility before you sit for your first lesson with the other rookies."

Yagi retreated off to one side of the room to keep an eye on things while the ink stained man wearing the solid black mask that had been introduced as Sumi stepped forward and rasped, "Which one of you will be going first?" Kojimaru exchanged a brief glance with Tenzou before he lifted his right hand to volunteer. "Well, don't just sit there, boy; get down here so I can start. And bring the paint you were given."

Kojimaru grabbed his bottle of paint as he rose to his feet. As he approached Sumi, the man pulled out a storage scroll and unsealed a black apron, several vials of dark ink, a pair of tattoo guns, a tattoo stencil, an ink stained stool, and a chair with a wooden platform and several straps on the left arm. Sumi then promptly donned the apron before he held his hand out as he instructed, "Give me your paint then take a seat and place your left arm on the wooden platform."

As soon as Kojimaru was seated, Sumi strapped the teen's left arm to the wooden platform in question. Next the ink stained shinobi washed and waxed the area of his arm where the tattoo would be placed to remove any dirt, oils, and hair that could possibly interfere with the tattooing process. After that, the man wiped down Kojimaru's arm with a bit of rubbing alcohol before he arranged a stencil of the ANBU tattoo dead center on the outside of his left arm just below his shoulder and secured it in place with tape before he used a purple marker to draw an outline of the twin swirls of the ANBU tattoo onto his arm.

Next the man carefully drew a series of specialized seals that were to be applied and would eventually be covered up by the tattoo inside of the outline. The first seal would ensure his loyalty to Konoha and the Hokage. The second seal would incinerate his body upon his death (to prevent enemies from delving any secrets from his flesh). The third seal would prevent truth serums from affecting him (in order to protect any sensitive information he might know). The fourth seal was to prevent mind control jutsu from affecting him (to prevent information from being pulled from him that way). And the final seal would be used to identify him as a legitimate ANBU Corps member to other members of the Corps.

"Try not to scream or jump once I start," Sumi ordered in a creepy tone once he had finished drawing out both the seals and the basic outline of the tattoo. "You'll just make me mess up and I'll have to start all over again. I'm told the pain of pulling out the chakra enhanced ink is ten times worse then the pain of injecting the ink into the skin in the first place."

The man then picked up one of the tattoo guns, placed a new needle into the tip, and slipped a bottle of red ink into place. Settling onto his stool, Sumi firmly grabbed hold of Kojimaru's arm, activated the gun with a small pulse of chakra, and deftly began applying the seals to Kojimaru's flesh. Unconsciously, as the man injected the ink and channeled his chakra into the burgeoning seals, the teen poured his magically corrupted chakra into the seals; preventing his body from expelling the foreign substance and increasing the overall effectiveness of the seals as they were tied more firmly to his body and mind by the lingering traces of magic that lived on in his chakra.

Despite the man's claims, Kojimaru felt no pain as the needle repeatedly bit into his flesh; though he did notice a slight burning sensation as the man's chakra pushed the ink deep into the tissue beneath his skin. Of course, Kojimaru's tolerance for pain had remained very high due to all of the training he'd been put through over the past ten years on top of what he'd had to endure during his two years in Orochimaru's clutches. His rapid internal healing ability also worked to reduce the amount of pain he felt when injured since the affected nerves and pain receptors were healed almost before the pain could be registered by his brain.

Once all five seals were in place, Sumi deactivated the tattoo gun and set it aside so that he could clean the excess ink and blood from Kojimaru's arm and inspect his work for any flaws. The man then picked up the unused gun, fitted it with a fresh needle, and attached a bottle of black ink to the gun. Once the gun was ready, he began tracing over the outlines he'd drawn onto Kojimaru's flesh before he filled in the center to hide the seals that had been applied. That took even less time than it had to ink in the seals and the moment he was finished, Sumi set down the gun and wiped Kojimaru's arm clean a third time.

The man then used a medical jutsu to heal the tattoo so that there was no chance of infection setting in or that his body would reject the ink; the man completely unaware that Kojimaru's chakra had already taken care of that. The last thing that Sumi did was to pour the small bottle of dark orange paint out onto his right hand before he placed his paint smeared hand over Kojimaru's unmarked mask and use his left hand to form a half tiger seal as he activated an unfamiliar jutsu. The fourteen year old could feel the man's chakra rushing over the entire mask for a brief moment before the man dropped his now clean hand away.

"That's you done, Tora," Sumi declared as he deftly unbuckled the straps that were holding Kojimaru's arm in place.

Tenzou traded places with Kojimaru at that point and the emerald eyed teen retreated back to his seat and thumbed through the Bounty Book to pass the time while Tenzou was getting his tattoo done. Every couple of minutes, he'd glance up to check on Sumi's progress because he didn't wish to be caught flatfooted like he had when he'd stumbled across Orochimaru's dossier. Occasionally, he would also spare a glance for Yagi-teichou just to make certain that he didn't accidentally ignore the man again; he didn't want to get on his training captain's bad side since that would potentially be hazardous to his health.

Half an hour later, Kojimaru closed his book and watched as Sumi painted Tenzou's mask using the same jutsu that he'd used on Kojimaru's cat mask. It was more than a little fascinating to watch the paint take on a life of its own as Sumi's chakra spread the orange liquid out over the mask before it was sucked down into the porcelain as it formed a unique set of accents on Tenzou's mask.

When the jutsu ended, the orange paint had settled inside of the rounded ears of the bear mask, outlined both the eyes and mouth, and formed a thick stripe that ran from the top of the mask down to the tip of the nose. Sumi's chakra had also etched several burnt orange lines (that almost looked black) onto the mask; giving definition to the mouth and nose to better define them. Seeing Tenzou's newly designed mask made Kojimaru curious as to what his mask now looked like and he nearly reached up to remove said mask before he recalled his orders to wear the mask at all times while inside of the building.

Further contemplation of his mask's design was shelved as Yagi ordered both fourteen year old Chuunin to follow him. What followed was a two hour tour of the entire facility; including a number of areas that they had not been allowed to enter on previous occasions. Those areas included the record hall, the dispatch office, the supply room, the armory, the kitchen, and the recreational lounge. They also revisited the training rooms, the mess hall, the library, and the infirmary.

While in both the supply room and the armory, Yagi-teichou took the time to outfit both boys with a standard ANBU weapons and supply kit. The kit included a tanto, a brace of kunai, a pack of shuriken, a medical kit, a roll of ninja wire, five smoke bombs, and a seal pack (containing premade explosive tags and chakra suppression tags). The only difference between their new weapons and the standard weapons they could purchase at any shinobi supply outlet was the fact that they were completely devoid of any identifying marks (in order to make them harder to trace back to Konoha).

At the end of those two hours, they were led back to the Lecture hall where they joined the other three rookies (who had also just had their masks painted and tattoos applied). Their first lesson turned out to be a three hour long overview of the rules and regulations that they would be required to follow as members of the Corps. It also included a detailed list of the potential punishments that they could be given for breaking the rules or disregarding the regulations. They were then given a half an hour break to get lunch before they returned to the lecture hall for their next lesson; their future duties as a member of the ANBU Corps.

By the time they were released for the evening meal, Kojimaru felt like his brain would melt if he had to memorize even one more fact. He would prefer to be sent through the Gauntlet while wearing a chakra suppression tag and a blindfold than sit through another lecture. Unfortunately, they would be spending most of September in the lecture hall covering several different topics. Any physical training they wished to get in during that time would have to be done on their own time.

At least they had been given the thirty-first off; they'd even received permission to leave the Facility for the first time since they had shown up on Kojimaru's birthday. The two fourteen year olds had made plans to sleep in their own beds that night and spend their day off celebrating Tenzou's fourteenth birthday; the two boys unable to do so back on the tenth due to being in the middle of the ANBU Initiation Test. They also intended to spend part of the day catching up with Aoba and their guardians.

As he changed back into his civilian attire, Kojimaru finally took the time to examine his mask. Like Tenzou's mask, the eyes and mouth of his cat mask had been outlined with the orange paint and defined with burnt orange lines made from Sumi's chakra. That was the end of the similarities though as the rest of the design on Kojimaru's mask had been made to mimic a tiger's stripes that framed the eyes, nose, and mouth. The mask basically looked like the stylized face of a white tiger with orange stripes in place of the black.

Kojimaru liked it.

* * *

_October 01, 0294 AtD, 9:48 AM  
Konohagakure no Sato, Hi no Kuni_

Sarutobi Hiruzen watched the five new ANBU recruits file into the office behind Kasai; his eyes quickly skimming along their painted animal masks in order to commit them to memory. Once he'd done that, he let his eyes search out the two youngest (and therefore the two shortest) recruits. That the two fourteen year olds had passed the rigorous tests that were designed to weed out those that were ill-prepared to cope with the harsh life of an ANBU Guard was unsurprising. The late Akimichi Torifu had ultimately planned for them to join the ANBU Corps and both boys had been extensively trained with that goal in mind.

Mokume Kunugi, Torifu's chosen successor, had been responsible for pushing the two boys (and their teammate) for the past two years but Torifu was the one that had seen to it that both boys had a solid foundation to build upon almost from the moment he'd taken responsibility for the two survivors. Even the selection of their guardians had been done with the utmost care; both men were loyal Konoha shinobi with impressive skill-sets and strong morals. They had also been men that were fairly easy to overlook because they hadn't really made a name for themselves outside of Konoha.

Most of the credit to the boys' growth as shinobi and as human beings could be directly attributed to their chosen guardians. The rest of it could be attributed to Shirakumo Hayama; their Jounin sensei. Torifu may have pulled a few strings and offered suggestions every now and then but it was Hayama that had molded Kojimaru, Tenzou, and their teammate Aoba into a forgettable team that was anything but forgettable if you were aware of their abilities.

Hiruzen hadn't even suspected those particular two boys of being the two child survivors of Orochimaru's depraved experimentations. He'd actually mostly forgotten about the two boys right up until they'd taken part in the defense against Iwa and Kumo's joint siege near the end of the Third Great War. Both of them had then disappeared back into obscurity until shortly after the Kyuubi's attack; when they had resurfaced to help in the restoration of the village.

Hiruzen had then received a sealed scroll from Kunugi that the newly promoted ANBU Commander had discovered amongst Torifu's personal effects within his ANBU office that explained all of Torifu's many plans for the two boys (each plan created to deal with a different scenario). The knowledge that scroll had held had answered many questions that Hiruzen had had regarding some of Torifu's stranger behavior. Such as the time when the man had adamantly insisted that Kojimaru was not an Uzumaki despite Kushina's persistent belief and insistence otherwise.

The Sandaime Hokage pulled himself out of his memories a heartbeat later as all five of the rookies lined themselves up in front of his desk while Yagi and Ushi fell into place on either end of the line to keep their rookies in line. Kasai moved up to take his place beside Hiruzen's desk facing the five new recruits a moment later.

"Hokage-sama, may I present the newest ANBU Corps recruits; Buta, Kori, Kaba, Tora, and Kuma," Kasai intoned the moment he was in place.

"Congratulations gentlemen," Hiruzen offered as he rose to his feet in order to approach the five rookies. Hiruzen then walked down the line of recruits in order to activate the hidden seals in their ANBU tattoos with a thread of chakra as he briefly pressed a finger to each tattoo. Once he had finished that, he addressed the recruits once more. "In honor of your promotion into the ANBU Corps, I would like to offer each of you the chance to select a Summoning Contract from the Hokage's Vault. Please take a moment to think about whether or not you will accept the offer."

Hiruzen sat back down at his desk and discreetly watched the five recruits out of the corner of his eye as he picked up his pipe, filled the bowl with tobacco leaves, and lit the leaves on fire with a small katon jutsu when he realized that he'd misplaced his book of matches yet again. He couldn't help but focus most of his attention on the two youngest recruits as the two of them held a silent conversation with one another with the barest of gestures. A single shake of the head from Tora had Kuma tipping his head to one side and twitching the fingers of his right hand. Tora then tensed his shoulders and minutely shifted his weight to the left.

Another twitch of Kuma's right hand had Tora ducking his head a hairsbreadth as the fingers of his left hand started to curl before he stopped them. Kuma's posture deflating just the smallest bit, in what Hiruzen imagined could only be disappointment, actually had Tora slumping slightly in defeat before he turned away from the other teen and gave the briefest of nods. The immediate straightening of Kuma's posture led Hiruzen to believe that the taller boy had actually just won the small disagreement that the two of them had had.

It amazed the Sandaime that two such young boys could have established such a close bond with one another. It had taken Hiruzen close to two decades to achieve a level of report with his late wife to carry on an entire argument with just a look and a few gestures in a matter of seconds. If he had not been watching the pair, he probably would have never noticed the interaction. It made him wonder how many times the two of them had carried on just such a conversation under the noses of the adults in their life. It also reminded him of the day he'd first spoken to both boys all those years ago and Tenzou had answered a question that Hiruzen had asked Kojimaru.

Shaking away his musings, Hiruzen drew on his pipe and released the smoke he had inhaled out through his nose before he asked, "Have you reached a decision yet?"

Buta and Kaba both declined the offer but Kori and Kuma both immediately accepted with Tora reluctantly accepting a heartbeat after the other two. Hiruzen found it curious that such a young boy would not be far more enthusiastic about being allowed to sign a summoning contract; most boys (and more than a few grown men) coveted summoning contracts because of the power they represented –a contract seen as proof that they were strong. There was far more to a contract than mere power though; if you failed to respect the summonses of your contract and earn their respect in return, then the contract would become useless as the summonses would refuse to answer your summons.

"Very well then, if the three of you will follow me to the vault, I will allow you to select a contract," Hiruzen instructed as he rose to his feet once more after pushing the matter of Tora's strange reluctance from his mind. "The rest of you are free to go."

The two recruits that had opted not to take a contract bowed to Hiruzen in response to the dismissal before they left the room. Ushi was the next one to leave after a short conversation with Yagi regarding the remaining recruits. It didn't really surprise Hiruzen when Yagi remained behind to watch over the three rookies that had stayed; the ANBU trainers rarely let their charges out of their sight when the new recruits were in uniform (least the rookies find trouble they were not prepared to handle).

As Hiruzen led the way out of his office, Kasai fell into step beside him while Yagi herded the three rookies along behind them. It didn't take the small group very long to reach the Vault and Hiruzen nicked his thumb and smeared a generous drop of blood across the security seals to release the barriers that protected the scrolls that were locked within. He then walked into the room and deftly guided the group to the corner where the summoning contracts were stored (most of them covered with a thick layer of dust) before he addressed the three rookies once more.

"The contracts are organized by the dominate chakra nature of the contract's species; I would suggest looking only at those contracts whose nature you share in order to increase the chances of forming a successful bond with your chosen contract."

Kuma made a beeline towards the doton natured summonses while Kori headed for the katon natured species. Tora on the other hand just shifted nervously on his feet and eyed the shelves of large scrolls with wariness. A soft exclamation of triumph saw Kuma pulling out a particularly dusty scroll from the very bottom of the shelves and Hiruzen felt his eyebrows climb up his forehead as he noted which contract the teen had chosen.

The Beaver Contract had actually been taken from an Ame kunoichi as a spoil of war during the Second Great Shinobi War and in all the years that Konoha had held the contract, not a single shinobi had signed the contract. It was also the perfect contract for Kuma; beavers were one of nature's more prominent architects and from what he had read in the taller boy's file, his use of the Mokuton was more in line along construction rather than natural formations.

Kori soon selected a contract as well; the older rookie taking the Lizard Contract. Hiruzen made a note to have Kasai keep an eye on that recruit as some of the reptile contracts demanded live sacrifices in payment for their services; the snakes being a prime example. The Sandaime then turned to the final rookie as Kuma stepped away from the shelves and pushed the shorter boy towards them with an exasperated huff.

Tora cast what Hiruzen imagined would be a dirty look back at his cohort before he reluctantly headed towards the Fuuton oriented contracts. He noted the way the boy fingered each of the various bird contracts before he shook his head and stepped back away from the shelves. Hiruzen wondered briefly if the teen would change his mind and refuse to take a contract when the teen unexpectedly flared his chakra. The short teen then strangely dropped down onto the floor and half crawled into a gap between a pair of scrolls.

He wriggled around a bit before he extracted himself along with a dusty old scroll that had been knocked behind the others at some point. Hiruzen couldn't help but let out a soft chuckle when Tora gave a small whine of dismay the moment he identified which contract he'd rescued from obscurity. A second small pulse of chakra from the teen had him hanging his head in defeat as he climbed to his feet and reluctantly retrieved the contract from the floor. Tora glared at the scroll through his mask for a moment before he reluctantly tucked it under his arm and slunk back to Kuma's side.

"Why are you taking a contract that you obviously have no wish to hold?" Hiruzen inquired curiously when he couldn't find a logical reason for the child to have taken a contract he obviously didn't want.

"To avoid upsetting the balance between my… Kekkei Genkai, Hokage-sama," Tora replied after a brief glance in Kori's direction. "Water is the only common element between them and so therefore I needed a contract with close ties to water from a species that can also survive on land in most any climate."

"And the Otter Contract was the only one that qualified?"

"It was the only one that responded to my chakra," Tora answered as he dropped his eyes back down to the scroll.

"You do realize that you will be unable to summon a creature that you hold in contempt, ne?" Kasai pointedly asked as he made as if to take the scroll from the teen.

"I do not hold otters in contempt; I just see them as being more of a girly summons because of their cuteness factor. I was hoping for something more along the lines of the Tiger Contract or maybe the Eagle Contract; something that would inspire fear from my opponents – not make them die of laughter."

Hiruzen couldn't help but chuckle in response to the rather childish declaration coming from the teen; it was refreshing to know that the child still retained a measure of naivety after living through a war. It was clear that the other four individuals in the room were also amused by Tora's claim; the two rookies outright laughing while both Yagi and Kasai merely shook their heads. Once Hiruzen regained control of his amusement he pointed out, "All joking aside, if you do not truly wish to sign that contract, no one is going to force you to take it. You don't have to take a contract at all, if you do not wish to."

"I know, Hokage-sama; all the same, I will take this one."

Hiruzen nodded in acceptance before he stated, "Then the three of you are dismissed."

All three rookies bowed to Hiruzen before they slipped out of the vault in single file with Yagi following along to escort them back to their training. Hiruzen waited until their chakra signatures disappeared from his senses before he turned to Kasai and asked, "What did you make of Tora's behavior?"

"The gaki only took a contract because Kuma wanted a contract. Had Tora absolutely refused to take a contract, Kuma would have refused one as well. When it comes to their training, they have stubbornly refused to learn something that the other has not been offered; unless it was related to their Kekkei Genkai. Kuma even learned the same fuuton jutsu that Tora learned over the past two years despite the fact that he doesn't have an affinity towards fuuton. I think the only other person that could have talked Tora into taking a contract if he didn't really want one would have been his guardian."

"That in itself is rather odd; why didn't he jump at the chance to take a contract? Most teenagers and more than a few adults I know would have been over the moon to be given such an opportunity."

"I have come to the conclusion that Tora dislikes the idea of blood sacrifice – his use of fuuinjutsu is limited to those seals that do not require blood unless he doesn't have much choice. He isn't afraid to spill blood and he shows no signs of suffering from hemophobia but he has to be prompted to use blood seals. It is also rather difficult to get him to sit still long enough for the medics to draw blood from him during routine medical exams."

"Do you think his aversion to offering up a blood sacrifice will hinder his ability to utilize the contract he took?"

"No but I suspect that it will prevent him from regularly summoning his contract partners except when he has no choice or if there is an obvious need to. I'm not familiar enough with the otters to say whether or not they will resent him if he consistently ignores them after signing the contract though."

"Yes, some summonses do not tolerate being ignored while others will grow irritable if you summon them for trivial tasks. I trust you will keep an eye on the gaki during the next five months?"

"Hai, I'll monitor Kori's summoning contract as well since lizards are closely related to snakes; though I don't believe the lizards will demand human sacrifices. It really depends on the species though."

Hiruzen nodded as the two of them exited the vault so that he could restore the security barriers that preserved and protected the wealth of contracts, jutsu, and information that was contained in the vault. As he parted ways with the masked Kunugi, he called back over his shoulder, "I will see you at next week's meeting if nothing else crops up in the mean time."

"Hai, Hokage-sama."

* * *

**Translations:** Japanese to English

Buta – pig  
Doton - earth  
Fuuton - wind  
Hai – yes  
Kaba – hippopotamus  
Katon - fire  
Kori – fox or badger (can also mean sly fellow)  
Kuma – bear  
Shogun – means (military) general. Also once used to describe various leaders/warlords in Japanese history. In this case, I'm using the word to mean military general and referring to the Daimyou's equivalent to the captain of the guard. The only reason why I didn't use teichou was because I wanted there to be a distinct difference between the shinobi and the samurai that the Daimyou employs for his guards.  
Sumi – ink (AnBu code name for the AnBu tattoo artist)  
Suiton - water  
Tora – tiger

**Notes: **

Hemophobia – the fear of blood (it is also the condition that Tsunade suffers from in the original manga/anime)

* * *

**11-15-15:** _Minor edits made to chapter to fix spelling/grammar mistakes and removed unnecessary author's notes._


	17. The Contracts

**Disclaimer:** _All HP characters are the property of JKR, the WB, and respective publishing companies and all Naruto characters are the property of Masashi Kishimoto. This is nothing more than a simple FanFiction that I have written. I have made no money from this or any of the other stories I have posted on this or other sites._

**Warnings:** _Mild to moderate violence, character death, alternate universe (i.e. kiss canon goodbye), OCC behaviors and personalities, a number of original characters and obscure canon characters to flesh out family trees, random chosen last names to give a number of characters surnames, and who knows what else._

**AN:** _This story is self-beta'd; so there may be occasional grammatical or spelling errors that crop up every now and then and for those I apologize in advance._

* * *

Chapter Seventeen: The Contracts

_October 01, 0294 AtD, 11:43 AM  
Konohagakure no Sato, Hi no Kuni_

Kojimaru stared down at the summoning contract sitting so innocently on the desk in front of him as he tried to quell the roiling of his stomach. After they had selected their contracts, Yagi had led them back to the lecture hall where he'd tossed them each a cleaning rag and ordered them to clean every single inch of their scrolls. He'd then spent an hour lecturing them on proper summoning etiquette before he'd taught all three of them the sequence of hand seals necessary to summon a contracted creature.

Immediately after that, they'd been ordered to sign the contracts, in blood, and place their bloody fingerprints below their name. Beside him, Tenzou had already completed the request; his brother's blood shimmering wetly as it slowly dried on the parchment upon which it had been spilled. Letting out a soft sigh as he bit back his distaste for using his own blood for anything, Kojimaru pulled out a kunai and deeply punctured the pad his right index finger and encouraged the blood to well up before he deftly started writing out his name.

He would need to reopen the wound twice more in order to complete the process thanks to his accelerated rate of healing and he was feeling more than a little annoyed by the time he managed to place his fingerprints below his name. The only thing that kept him from showing exactly how irritated he the process had made him was the fact that Tenzou was nearly vibrating in excitement beside him. His brother had often dreamed of one day signing a summoning contract from the very first moment that they'd been taught about them back in the academy.

As lowly orphans without a clan or prospective apprenticeship, their chances of gaining a contract had been non-existent until just that morning when they learned that full-fledged ANBU Recruits were offered a chance to select a contract from the Hokage's archive. The reason for that offer, according to Yagi, was to provide those in the ANBU alternative ways of passing on messages, tracking their targets, and infiltrating places where an animal would be overlooked. Not everyone chose to take a contract (some people just didn't have the reserves necessary or had some other reason for refusing) but enough of them did that the number of summoning contracts in circulation within the ANBU Corps was rather high when compared to Konoha's Shinobi Force.

Should a person survive their minimum five year stay in the ANBU Corps, the contract they had signed was theirs to keep with the stipulation that the contract be returned to the achieve upon their death so that another could take it up in the future. The only exception when it came to the requirement of returning the contract to Konoha was in those cases where a contracted shinobi took on an apprentice that signed the contract at some point during their training.

"Now that all three of you have finally finished," Yagi intoned as he tossed a mildly irritated glance in Kojimaru's direction in response to him dragging his feet (so to speak). "You'll need to grab your scrolls and follow me to the training rooms that have been set aside for you to use for your first summoning."

Kojimaru rolled up his contract scroll (after making certain the blood had dried) and tucked it under his arm as he rose to his feet alongside of Tenzou. The two of them then hurried after Yagi with Kori falling into step behind them. The three of them were soon led to the top floor where the smaller training rooms (designed for individual use rather than group training) resided. It was a part of the building that Kojimaru and Tenzou were both intimately familiar with as that was where the two of them had done most of their training alongside Aoba for the past two years.

Yagi pulled up in front of a trio of doors on the north eastern corner of the building that had reserved signs taped to the center of each door before he spun around to face the trio of rookies as he instructed, "You'll need to select a room and once inside you will need to activate the privacy barriers and remove your masks before you attempt to summon a member of your new contract. The more chakra you push into the technique, the higher your first summon will be in the hierarchy of the clan you will potentially be contracted to. Size is not always a factor but as a general rule of thumb; the more powerful (both politically and physically) a summons is, the larger it is."

"For first contact; I suggest you aim small to increase your chances of meeting a summon that will not get offended at being called by what they will see as a 'nobody'. A word of warning, some summoning clans will require you to pass a challenge of their choice before they allow you to call yourself their summoner. That is especially true when it comes to the more powerful members of the summoning clan; the boss of any clan being a prime example. Some of them will also demand rewards and payments each time that you call upon them; so keep that in mind, since some payments will cost you far more than you may wish to pay."

"Your goals for the day are to establish a rapport with a member of the summoning clan whose contract you signed, find out what requirements you will need to fulfill to retain possession of your contract, and acquire permission to summon your new contact for further training and lessons. Occasionally, a summoning clan will require you to visit their home before they allow you to officially become their summoner; if that ends up being the case, you are required to inform me before you allow them to reverse summon you to their home so that your sudden departure doesn't see you being declared a traitor."

"Do you have any questions?" Yagi inquired once he'd finished.

"No, sir," all three rookies replied in unison.

"Good. You will have the rest of the day to establish contact with your new summonses. If you run into any problems, I will be here to answer your questions or help you subdue an unruly summons."

"Come on," Tenzou murmured as he grabbed Kojimaru's wrist and pulled him into the nearest room with him; the taller teen blatantly ignoring the part of their instructions that required them to use separate rooms.

A small fond grin tugged at Kojimaru's lips as he allowed Tenzou to drag him into the room. He knew they wouldn't get in trouble for disobeying that particular order since the only reason that they would have been required to use separate rooms was to protect their identity. That didn't mean that Yagi wouldn't set them to doing menial labor as punishment for disobeying his instructions but they both firmly believed washing dishes or scrubbing floors was well worth sticking together no matter what.

As soon as the door closed behind them, Tenzou dropped Kojimaru's arm and whipped around to activate the privacy seals that would lock down the training room and prevent anyone from walking in on them. Tenzou then reached up to pull off his mask as he rushed towards the center of the room; a huge grin of excitement threatening to split his face in two. Kojimaru snorted in amusement as he reached up to remove his own mask before he sat down and leaned back against the wall beside the door; the green eyed teen more than happy to let Tenzou take first crack at summoning.

Tenzou spun around to face Kojimaru as soon as he reached the center of the room; the slightly younger teen showing off a bit as he kicked his thumb on a tooth and sped through the required hand seal sequence with a dramatic flare. Tenzou then slammed both of his hands down on the hardwood floor beneath his feet as he cried out a commanding, "Kuchiyose no Jutsu!"

A circle of sealing script with two lines bisecting it sprang into being beneath his hands and spread outwards for several inches before it burst into smoke. The smoke cleared just a few seconds later to reveal a young juvenile beaver about the size of a medium watermelon with rusty orange fur that was standing up on its hind legs with his its eyes closed as it stretched out its forelegs. The creature yawned a moment later as it lowered its forelegs and scratched at its back with one paw before it opened its eyes for a brief second. The creature then froze as its eyes flew wide open to stare around the bare training room in shock and no little fear as it dropped down onto all four feet.

"Bizekuki, you'd better not be pranking me again or I'm gonna tell okaasan on you!" the little beaver threatened as it slapped its wide tail on the floor in a mixture of fear and irritation.

"Sugoi," Tenzou breathed excitedly as he crouched down beside the beaver to get a better look at it.

"Ahh! Human! Tousan! Kaasan! Save me! I'm too young to be a hat!" the beaver cried as it finally got a look at Tenzou and started running around in circles. Kojimaru had to slap his hand over his mouth to stifle his laughter over the antics of the juvenile beaver least he frighten the poor thing even more.

"Don't be frightened; I'm not going to hurt you. I'm your new summoner," Tenzou hastily assured the panicking animal as he sat back and raised his hands to show he was unarmed.

"Summoner…?" the beaver inquired suspiciously as it stopped running and rose back up on its hind legs to eye Tenzou a bit more carefully.

"Hai, I signed the summoning contract with your clan this morning and I summoned you here on my first try. I didn't mean to scare you."

"I'm not scared," the beaver denied indignantly and several snickers escaped Kojimaru as he recalled the way the little thing had been running around like a chicken with its head cut off. The beaver jumped and whipped his head around to stare at Kojimaru before it began running around in circles again as it cried, "I'm surrounded by barbarians! Kaasan save me! Tousan defend me! I don't want to be soup!"

"Nobody is going to eat you," Tenzou corrected with a small trace of exasperation as he reached out to snag the flighty creature in his arms. "We aren't barbarians, we're shinobi, and that's my brother."

"Is he our new summoner too?" the beaver asked curiously as he curled into Tenzou's arms and began sniffing at his clothes even as he peered carefully at Kojimaru.

Kojimaru waved to the little thing and flashed it a smile as he answered, "Iie, I didn't sign the beaver contract; I signed the Otter Clan's contract."

"Really? The otters live just downriver from our dam," the beaver declared as it began searching the room again. "Who did you summon out of their nice warm holt?"

"Er, no one yet; I let Kuma go first."

"Who's Kuma…?"

"I am," Tenzou replied as he cradled the beaver like a child and inspected one of its paws.

"Hmm, I would have called you tasty. Did you know that you smell like trees and mud?"

Kojimaru couldn't help but burst out in another round of laughter at that comment before he quickly sobered as it occurred to him that his scent must smell very similar to Tenzou's because of his Mokuton. Tenzou shot him a dirty look for laughing all the same, his brother well aware of what he had found funny, before he turned his attention back to the critter in his arms.

"What's your name?"

"I'm Bizemori, future architect and logger extraordinaire; at your service! Where are you hiding the tasty trees I smell on you? Ne, ne; can you summon Bizekuki? She's my twin sister and she'll never believe me when I tell her that I met our new summoner if you don't!"

"Ano, I don't know how to summon a specific individual yet but I suppose I can try," Tenzou replied a little uncertainly as he set Bizemori down on the floor and climbed to his feet. "And I'm not hiding any trees; you probably just smell my Kekkei Genkai."

"Why would your Kekkei Genkai smell like trees?" Bizemori asked as he scampered back a bit to watch as Tenzou ran through the hand seals for the summoning technique a second time.

"Because my brother and I both have the Mokuton," Tenzou replied just before he slammed his hands on the ground a second time. "Kuchiyose no Jutsu!"

"You're a Senju?" Bizemori demanded with excitement as a burst of smoke brought with it a beaver that was identical to Bizemori in every way bar the large pink bow that was tied to the base of her tail.

"Chigau, we are both clanless orphans," Kojimaru corrected in a slightly annoyed tone; far too many people always assumed that they were of the Senju the moment they learned they could use the Mokuton. It wasn't that he (or Tenzou) hated the Senju Clan or anything like that; it was more that he hated the reminder that he and his brothers were using what amounted to stolen Kekkei Genkai. It was also a reminder that their true history and families had been lost to them.

"If you are orphans, how do you know you are not?" Bizemori asked logically as he slipped closer to Kojimaru and sniffed the air.

"Because we're not," Kojimaru stated firmly as he frowned at the persistent little rodent.

"What did you do now, Bizemori?" the female beaver demanded as she strode up to her brother and bopped him on the head with her tail. "Okaasan has been worrying her tail off because you snuck out of the lodge again!"

"Itai! Don't do that, Bizekuki! And I didn't sneak out. We were summoned!"

"Don't lie! Everyone knows we haven't got a summoner, dobe."

"Shows what you know, baka!" Bizemori countered as he narrowed his eyes at his sister. "Why do you think we're both standing in a strange room with two humans?"

"Humans…?" Bizekuki repeated as she halted her tail in mid-swing and stared wide-eyed at Tenzou.

"Not just any humans… Senju… with active Mokuton; can't you just smell the trees on them?"

"We're not Senju," Tenzou corrected with a small annoyed huff before he ignored the juvenile male and introduced himself to the little female. "My name is Kuma; I'm your new summoner. You must be Bizekuki – Bizemori told me about you just before he asked me to summon you here."

"If you are not Senju, then how can you have the Mokuton?" Bizemori grumbled as he crossed his arms and half glared at Tenzou.

"We just do," Kojimaru deadpanned as he pulled a leaf out of his utility pouch and fed it just enough chakra to coax it into growing into a small tree that quickly twisted itself into the shape of a small couch just the right size for the twin beavers with all of its leaves forming the cushions.

"It's a long story," Tenzou added as he grew a small table and a pair of small cups before filling them with water he drew directly from the air. "Once we know one another better, we might be willing to tell you about us but until then, we are not allowed to just tell anybody about our past."

Both beavers hummed absently in response to Tenzou's words as they crept forward to sniff at the wooden constructs; Bizemori even going so far as to nibble on the branches that made up the left arm of the couch. Bizekuki was more interested in the cups of water and she quickly drained one of them before she actually started eating the cup. Both teens felt a shiver of premonition race up their spines as the two beavers eyed them with far more interest while they continued to snack on the items they'd grown.

"If we are kidnapped in our sleep and forced to grow an endless supply of trees for a huge colony of beavers for the rest of our lives, I am going to blame you and then I am going to grow ice splinters in uncomfortable places every time you close your eyes for the rest of your life," Kojimaru threatened in a near pleasant tone as he mock glared at Tenzou.

"I'm sure they wouldn't even think of doing such a thing," Tenzou countered rather quickly; though he did carefully eye both beavers very closely as if he wasn't exactly certain of his own statement.

"Ice splinters…?" Bizekuki inquired curiously as set down her half eaten cup and moved close enough to sniff at Kojimaru's pants.

"Hai, ice splinters," Kojimaru confirmed as he brought his hand up to grow a single ice flower in the shape of a water lily that he offered to the little female. "I wield the Hyouton alongside of the Mokuton."

"So pretty," Bizekuki purred as she boldly scampered right up onto Kojimaru's lap and daintily collected the flower from him. "You can be my personal summoner."

"No he can't baka; he's not our summoner," Bizemori countered as he looked up from the couch he was still chewing on.

"Dobe, we can have more than one contract holder at a time!"

"I've already signed a different contract," Kojimaru interjected before the two could continue bickering. "But I'm sure Kuma won't mind summoning you occasionally."

"Why did you sign a different contract? Don't you like us?" Bizekuki inquired as she looked up at Kojimaru with really wide eyes that shimmered with unshed tears.

"I like a lot of animals," Kojimaru replied with a snort; the puppy-eyed stare had long since stopped working on him after the high number of babysitting missions that Hayama-sensei had put them through when they were younger. Not even his two year old godson could manipulate him with that particular look and not for a lack of effort. "And I signed a different contract because I felt a connection with a different summoning clan."

"No fair," Bizekuki complained with a pout as she abandoned his lap and returned to the table to grab her half eaten cup; the ice flower still firmly clutched in one paw.

"He signed Kawashimo-oji's contract," Bizemori offhandedly informed his sister as he left off eating the couch to drink the second cup of water.

"Oh, that's okay I guess," Bizekuki absently replied in a dismissive tone. She then turned back to Kojimaru before she asked, "Are you going to summon ojisan now? Or are you going to call one of our cousins?"

Kojimaru shifted a bit uncomfortably before he shrugged a replied, "This will be my first time summoning one of the otters so I don't know who I'll be calling."

Both beavers turned to stare at him expectantly before Bizemori demanded, "Well, what are you waiting for? We want to see who you summon so we know who we can go to for help if the elders don't believe us when we tell them we have a new summoner."

Kojimaru let out a soft growling huff in response to the juvenile's pushiness before he reluctantly climbed to his feet and traded places with Tenzou so that he could initiate his first summons. Next, he conjured a razor sharp ice kunai that he used to slice open the pad of his thumb (making the incision far deeper than he could with just his tooth in order to prevent it from healing too fast). He then gathered roughly one tenth of his chakra to pour into the jutsu as he ran through the required sequence of hand seals as quickly as possible (so his thumb wouldn't heal before he could complete the sequence) before slamming his hands down on the floor in front of him as he quietly murmured, "Kuchiyose no Jutsu."

A much larger circle of sealing script than the two that Tenzou had formed sprang into being beneath his hands and spread outwards for several feet before it burst into large cloud of smoke. From within the smoke there was a small growl of irritation coupled with a hissed curse that indicated the individual that Kojimaru had just summoned was a little irritated. When the smoke finally dissipated, all four of the youngsters (the two fourteen year olds were technically not yet adults, after all, even if most of the village treated them like they were) in the room grew more than a little nervous.

The otter that Kojimaru had summoned was at least as tall as Ibiki and cut a far more intimidating figure than the Head of Konoha's Torture and Interrogation Department. The sable fur on his back and the cream colored fur of his belly were both liberally sprinkled with gray and he had a thick bushy mustache that was nearly solid gray. Unlike the two juvenile beavers, the otter Kojimaru called wore a gray vest made from cured sharkskin, loose cotton breaches, and heavy black boots. He also wore a twin set of katana strapped across his back, a cutlass on his right hip, and a seaweed eye patch over his left eye.

All in all, the otter looked more like a seasoned pirate than the cute cuddly juvenile otter that Kojimaru had been expecting to summon based upon Tenzou's two attempts at summoning.

The otter narrowed his single eye as he glanced around the room once before he focused on Kojimaru. The green eyed fourteen year old bravely held his ground as the two of them locked gazes for a brief moment. The otter then hummed in what oddly sounded like approval before he broke eye contact and turned around to take in Tenzou and the two juvenile beavers that were half hiding behind their summoner. The intimidating otter then let out an annoyed huff before he sternly addressed the two youngsters.

"There you two rascals are; do you have any idea of how worried your parents are because of your disappearing act this morning? We'd feared the gators got you when we couldn't find hide nor hair of you any where near the dam!"

"We didn't mean to disappear, Kawanari-san; honest," Bizekuki contritely offered as she clung to Tenzou's ankle.

"Our new summoner called us and…"

"New summoner…?" Kawanari repeated before Bizemori could finish what he was saying. The otter then glared at both teens in the room before he demanded, "Which one of you inconsiderate humans have been holding these children hostage from their parents?"

"I am not holding them hostage," Tenzou corrected as he scowled in response to the accusation. "This was my first time summoning and after I summoned Bizemori, he asked me to summon his sister so that she could act as a witness to his news that the Beaver Contract has been signed. We just kind of got caught up in a little debate about clans and contracts and lost track of time."

"Why should I believe you? You look far too small to be a summoner."

"Don't you dare insult my brother," Kojimaru growled as he began glaring at the towering summons.

"And who are you to order me about, shrimp?"

"The new summoner of the Otter Contract," Kojimaru retorted as he fought the urge to kick the otter in the shin for the dig at his lack of height on top of the insult directed at Tenzou.

"You expect me to believe that two human-pups have what it takes to be the new summoners of the Great River Clans?"

"Yes," Kojimaru stated without any hesitation. "How else would you explain your appearance inside of a sealed room with us, fish-breath?"

"Well pull my rudder and call me a boat; you've got me there, runt," Kawanari quipped as he slapped his tail on the ground in amusement. "As the little rapscallion in pink mentioned earlier, I'm Kawanari."

"You can call me Tora for now, old geezer."

"Tora…? You don't look like much of a tiger. You look more like a koneko to me."

"And you look like you'd make a great pincushion," Kojimaru snapped back in a flat tone.

"Oh-ho, the little koneko is a bit sensitive, ne?" Kawanari chortled as he slapped his tail on the ground a second time.

"And it's quite obvious to me that you're a bit more than a little senile, old geezer."

"You should learn to show a bit more respect to your elders, koneko; I might feel the need to turn you over my knee and paddle your hind end."

"And you should not insult and threaten a trained shinobi at your advanced age; you might end up throwing your back out when you start running in fear," Kojimaru fired right back as he fell into a defensive stance.

"Sou desu ka? You're a cheeky little rascal, I'll give you that," Kawanari replied as he reached up to draw the katana that sat behind his left shoulder. "Guess I'll just have to give you a quick lesson in manners."

"Careful, there fish-breath; wouldn't want you to bite off more than you could chew at your age – you might choke on it," Kojimaru retorted as a short vine whip riddled with delicate ice flowers grew out of his right hand.

Kawanari barred his teeth at Kojimaru just before he flew towards the fourteen year old with his katana held horizontally out in front of him. Kojimaru stood his ground until the very last second when he twirled out of the way of the attack, covered the floor in a sheet of ice, and cracked his whip in the direction of the otter's feet. The giant otter cursed as he slipped on the unexpected ice before he used his tail to steady himself as he twisted around to slash at Kojimaru's vine whip.

The teen allowed the otter to cut the whip in half as he dropped the whip to the ground and formed a pair of short ice blades that he used to deflect the katana away from his face. He then used his short stature to his advantage as he stepped up under the otter's guard to aim a slash at Kawanari's vulnerable stomach. He would end up skinning his knuckles on the otter's sharkskin vest as the otter's tail snapped around and slammed Kojimaru backwards to stop the attack and put some distance between them.

Kojimaru then threw both of his swords at the summons before he brought the severed whip back into play as the vine grew into a pair of trees that immediately began trying to tangle the otter up in its branches. Kawanari dodged the flying swords and escaped the trap by using Kawarimi to trade places with Kojimaru. The green eyed Chuunin laughed as he melted into the trees and dropped down to the floor as he flooded the entire room with his chakra to make it harder for the otter to sense him. He would rise up out of the floor behind the otter with another pair of swords and attempt to hamstring him just seconds later.

Kawanari cursed as he launched himself into the air using his muscular tail at the last second to avoid the crippling blow. The otter then ran through a short string of hand seals before he expelled a compact stream of pressurized water from his mouth. Kojimaru smirked as he turned the water into ice with a touch of the hand and side-stepped the attack before he poured chakra into the stream of animated ice to send it back at the otter. Kawanari would curse again as he once again used Kawarimi to forcefully trade places with Kojimaru.

The teen had expected that though, and the otter landed right in the middle of another trap as the floor came to life to wrap around his legs and tail. The ice flow then curved around to continue its attack while the two living trees in the middle of the room caught Kojimaru and gently set him back on his feet. Kawanari merely laughed as he drew his second katana and hacked the floor to pieces to escape the trap. The otter then began moving even faster as he attacked Kojimaru with a flurry of slashes and jabs that put the teen back on the defensive.

In order to buy himself some breathing room, Kojimaru dove forward under the next attack and let himself sink back into the floor. He then moved into the closest tree and poured more of his chakra into the construct before he cut the leaves free as they began morphing into Moku Bunshin. While Kawanari was busy mowing down the army of clones, Kojimaru was melting the ice he'd created since the start of the spar and flooding the entire floor. As soon as there was a good three inches of water in the room, Kojimaru re-flooded the floor with his chakra and moved so that he was positioned directly beneath the otter.

Timing his attack carefully, Kojimaru froze the water once more as he reached up and grabbed hold of the otter's tail and pulled him half down into the floor with him. Vines of both wood and ice wrapped themselves tightly about the otter as Kojimaru released him and climbed up out of the floor. He had only a brief moment to smirk at the summons before what he thought had been the otter exploded into a puddle of water; he'd caught a Mizu Bunshin. He had only a brief moment to wonder where the hell Kawanari had gotten to before he felt a breath of warm air ghost along his neck just before his world went dark.

* * *

_October 01, 0294, 1:13 PM  
Konohagakure no Sato, Hi no Kuni_

"What a lively little pup you turned out to be, koneko," Kawanari chuckled as he gently caught the unconscious boy before he could hit the ground. He then carried the child over to where the other boy was warily watching him. "When your brother wakes up; tell him to pack for a week long training trip, pup."

"He'll go nowhere without me," the unnamed boy stubbornly insisted as he reached out to take the smaller child.

"That won't be a problem seeing as how Bizezuumi-toumoku will be most interested in meeting the pup that summoned his niece and nephew away from their breakfast. We'll reverse summon the pair of you at dawn tomorrow whether or not you're ready; so I suggest you both be ready," Kawanari countered as he collected the two young beavers. "I only gave koneko a light tap on the noggin, so he'll be up soon enough."

Kawanari then stood up and cut his connection to the chakra that had pulled him from his home just an hour earlier; taking the twins with him so that he could return them to their parents. He reappeared in a puff of smoke directly on top of his family's holt near the mouth of the Houseki River. He then shifted the twins up onto his shoulder as he took to the water and made his way up river with powerful strokes of his legs and tail.

As he swam, Kawanari pondered his clan's newest (and youngest) summoner. He'd known it was the little green eyed gaki that had summoned him the moment he'd clapped eyes on the whelp; the boy's odd chakra announcing him loud and clear (the seal obscuring his signature unable to hide it from the otter due to the nature of the summoning contract). That hadn't stopped him from challenging the pup since the Otter Clan, as a whole, refused to answer the call of a weak summoner; they had their pride, after all. The boy had backbone, that was for sure, and he'd surprisingly performed above Kawanari's expectations.

The most interesting thing about the little koneko had been the merging of the two Kekkei Genkai that the pup carried in his blood. Two opposing Kekkei Genkai that should have canceled each other out; since the Mokuton brought life to the world around it while the Hyouton snuffed it out.

He also couldn't refute that the pup had been well trained in the use of his conflicting Kekkei Genkai, kenjutsu, and in thinking on his feet. The child still had a long ways to go before he could be considered a master but he had a good solid foundation on which to build. If the second human pup was any where near as skilled as the first one, then the Beavers would be pleased with their new summoner as well; especially if the boy carried the same Kekkei Genkai.

"What did you two scalawags learn about your new summoner while you were in the Human Realms?"

"He and his brother are Mokuton users but they refute any claim to the Senju name," Bizemori promptly answered. "He was also really nice to me. His brother's chakra is a bit funny but he grows a tasty couch."

"I sensed great discomfort from both boys each time the Senju Clan was mentioned," Bizekuki thoughtfully added after a moment. "Our summoner said he might tell us their story once we know one another better. He made it sound like it was a big hush, hush secret. You really made our summoner mad when you started fighting his brother too. I think the only reason he didn't join the fight was because he was protecting us from the ice and trees. He also kept muttering something about stupid contracts and stupid tests under his breath the entire time."

"Arigatou, little ones," Kawanari murmured as he picked up the pace.

The trio was nearly to Yubiwa Lake when they were hailed by familiar face and the children quickly tumbled off of the otter's back in order to greet their father. As he trailed after the small family, Kawanari couldn't help but wonder what exciting adventures lay in wait for his clan and their long time allies now that they'd both gained new summoners.

Summoners that were apparently very close to one another; meaning that the otters and beavers would potentially be fighting and working together in the Human World for the first time in over a century.

* * *

**Translations:** Japanese to English

Ano – uh/um  
Bizekuki – twin sister of Bizemori; the name of a beaver summons which is derived from bizebaze (beaver) + kuki (stem). This is the format that I will use for all future names of the beavers summoned by Tenzou (much as most of the toads that are summoned in canon have names that start with 'gama').  
Bizemori – twin brother of Bizekuki; name is derived from bizebaze (beaver) + mori (forest)  
Bizezuumi – the Boss Summons of the Beaver Clan &amp; uncle to the twins; his name is derived from bizebaze (beaver) + mizuumi (lake)  
Chigau – can be used to mean wrong, no, or to differ  
Houseki – jewel  
Itai – ouch  
Kawanari – another otter name derived from kawauso (river otter) + kaminari (thunder)  
Kawashimo – the name of an otter summons that is derived from kawauso (river otter) + shimo (frost)  
Koneko – kitten  
Kuchiyose no Jutsu – Summoning Technique  
Okaasan/kaasan – mother  
Otousan/tousan – father  
Ne, ne – one way of getting someone's attention, can be a sort of childish way of saying hey, hey  
Sou desu ka? – Is that right?  
Toumoku – chief/head/leader  
Yubiwa – ring

**Definitions:**

Holt – an otter's home  
Lodges – a beaver's home  
Rudder – a reference to an otter's (or beaver's) tail  
Scalawag – ruffian, tramp

**Notes: **

Relationship between the beavers and otters – I am fully aware that the two species aren't actually related. It's more that their two clans are just close because they both are mammals that live in/near water, spend a lot of time in the water, and made their homes in the same general vicinity (as I have them as neighbors in the story). They also don't compete for the same food sources since otters mostly eat fish, shellfish, and some water plants while beavers are vegetarians.

* * *

**11-15-15:** _Minor edits made to chapter to fix spelling/grammar mistakes and removed unnecessary author's notes._


	18. The Summons

**Disclaimer:** _All HP characters are the property of JKR, the WB, and respective publishing companies and all Naruto characters are the property of Masashi Kishimoto. This is nothing more than a simple FanFiction that I have written. I have made no money from this or any of the other stories I have posted on this or other sites._

**Warnings:** _Mild to moderate violence, character death, alternate universe (i.e. kiss canon goodbye), OCC behaviors and personalities, a number of original characters and obscure canon characters to flesh out family trees, random chosen last names to give a number of characters surnames, and who knows what else._

**AN:** _This story is self-beta'd; so there may be occasional grammatical or spelling errors that crop up every now and then and for those I apologize in advance._

* * *

Chapter Eighteen: The Summons

_October 02, 0294 AtD, 5:29 AM  
Houseki River/ Yubiwa Lake, Summons World_

Tenzou felt a blanket of unfamiliar chakra wrap around him seconds before he felt himself yanked out of reality. He reappeared on a river bank in a cloud of smoke a heartbeat later. Waving away the dissipating smoke, he got a brief glimpse of two large beavers and a trio of tall otters before a second cloud of smoke engulfed him accompanied by the familiar zing of Kojimaru's unique chakra.

"Chikushou, that was by far the most nauseating form of travel I've ever had the misfortune of experiencing," Kojimaru complained as he cleared away the last of the smoke with a small fuuton jutsu.

"You'll get used to it quick enough, koneko," the one eyed-otter from the previous day promised as he grinned at the green eyed teen.

"Sugoi," Kojimaru deadpanned in a flat voice that said he was anything but overjoyed. "So why exactly do I have to put up with you for a full week, fish-face?"

"You weren't kidding when you said he was a right cheeky little pup, Kawanari," the tallest of the three otters proclaimed with a laugh as he slapped his tail on the ground several times.

"At least you got a talkative one; our summoner hasn't said a single word since he arrived," the smaller of the two beavers observed as he leaned closer to inspect Tenzou.

Tenzou laughed at the irony in that statement as he openly studied the two beavers in return; it was usually his brother that was the silent one. Both beavers were right around five feet tall with the shorter of the two falling an inch or two short. Aside from being shorter than the trio of otters, they were also twice as wide; their bodies far stockier and lined with a thick layer of fat beneath their glossy hides. The two of them were also wearing brown vests made from tightly woven reeds and reed rope belts with woven reed pouches attached to them. That was where their similarities ended as the tallest of the pair had lighter fur with an orange tint to it while the shorter beaver had rich brown fur that was so dark it was nearly black.

"Don't worry, my brother will talk your ear off soon enough," Kojimaru commented offhandedly as he briefly glanced at the beavers before returning his attention to the otters. "You never did answer my questions, old geezer."

"Our chief wishes to meet with you so he can decide whether or not he will allow you to keep our contract," Kawanari replied in a cheerful tone as he swept Kojimaru off his feet by the back of his shirt. "We'll see the lot of you in seven days."

"Wait, what…? What do you mean you'll see us in seven days?" Tenzou demanded as he turned to scowl at the one-eyed otter. "I told you my brother goes no where without me; we're not about to let you split us up now!"

"You already split yourselves up when you chose to sign different contracts," the third otter, who was distinctly female, stated as she blocked Tenzou's path when he tried to chase after the otter that was currently carrying his brother towards the river. "And you have your own tests that you will need to worry about, pup."

The two male otters slipped into the river at that point and Tenzou had one last glimpse of Kojimaru's worried green eyes before his brother was swept away with the current. The female otter darted after them the moment they were out of sight. The brown eyed teen took a single step after them before he was stopped by the orange furred beaver.

"You needn't worry about your brother; the otters will not harm him."

"In the nine years since we were placed on a team together, my brother and I have only ever been separated for more than a few hours once and that was only because our sensei sent Kojimaru back to the village alone to deliver an important message while the rest of our team protected an injured comrade. My brother took the separation far harder than I did and I was miserable for all seven and a half days we were apart."

"It's a little late to be worrying about that now," the dark furred beaver stated before he slipped into the water and began swimming upriver. "Come on, Bizezuumi-toumoku is waiting for us."

"Hold on tight; we wouldn't want you to fall off now," the orange furred beaver instructed as he swept Tenzou up onto his back before he too took to the water.

Tenzou latched onto the beaver's vest with one hand as they sank into the chilly water even as he twisted about to stare down the river in the direction that the otters had taken Kojimaru. After a full minute, he let out a soft sigh and swung his gaze forward as the powerful creature beneath him swam upstream with powerful strokes of his feet and tail. He would glance back behind them every few minutes all the same; his concern for his absent brother still strong.

His attention was soon pulled from Kojimaru by his first glimpse of the magnificent dam that sat at the head of the river on the edge of a large lake. Unlike your typical beaver dam, which is built of trees, logs, and branches haphazardly stacked and packed tight with mud, clay, and leaves; this dam was an architectural masterpiece. It was still built from a combination of wood and clay but that was where the similarities ended.

The fifty story construct was made up of horizontal wooden beams that had been sanded flat so that they sat flush against one another and fitted into an interlocking pattern so that no two seams fell directly above each other. Each beam was secured to the one beneath it with several wooden pegs along the center to prevent them from shifting. Set in the very center of the dam was a large floodgate (currently closed) below a large spillway over which the excess water from the lake poured into the river. The outer wall of the dam had then been covered with a thick coat of sun-baked clay into which a detailed mural made from colored stone chips and the broken shards of seashells; he'd later learn that the mural depicted the long intertwined histories of the Beaver and Otter Clans.

"Oh, wow," Tenzou breathed as he took in the dam; a small part of him noting that it stretched off into the distance as far as he could see in both directions.

"That's the Great Beaver Dam; our clan's pride and joy," the orange furred beaver stated in response to Tenzou's soft exclamation.

"It's magnificent," Tenzou declared as he ran his eyes over every inch of the dam that he could see from his perch on the beaver's back. "I dare say it's an architectural masterpiece that surpasses even the historical Tanzaku Castle in Tanzaku Gai."

Both beavers chuckled in response to his words as they angled towards the left bank of the river. Once on land, the two of them took off at a shambling lope towards the dam. They would arrive at the towering wall just a few minutes later and Tenzou was promptly set back on his feet as the two beavers began using their tails to tap out a complex rhythm on a hollow log that sat off to one side of the small clearing that they'd ended up in. A creaking from overhead drew Tenzou's eyes upwards and he soon found the source of the creaking to be a rope and pulley lift that was being lowered into the clearing from the top of the dam.

As soon as the lift reached the ground, Tenzou found himself bustled into the construct by his traveling companions. He grabbed onto the rail of the lift when the entire platform shifted beneath him as it rose steadily into the air just a few minutes later. His eyes were inevitably drawn outwards when he got a bird's eye view of the river as it wound through the forest away from the lake towards the ocean in the distance. Part of him wished Kojimaru was with him at that moment; his brother would have loved the view.

There was little time for him to be depressed over their recent separation as they soon reached the top of the dam and Tenzou got his first clear view of the lake beyond. If the dam was magnificent, it was nothing compared to the rambling city that sat half submerged in the very center of the lake. The entire city (and there was no doubt that it was a city) was made up of graceful towers, sweeping bridges, and rambling walkways that threaded through an extensive water garden filled with an assortment of trees, reeds, grasses, and flowering shrubs.

"Take a deep breath, kit; you're going to need it," the dark beaver instructed with a smirk before he shoved Tenzou into the lake.

He barely had time to suck in a quick gulp of air before he was being dragged beneath the water and part of him wondered if the beavers were going to drown him. He need not have worried as he would eventually learn that all of the entrances to the Beaver Clan's sprawling city were found underwater. Tenzou thought his lungs might burst by the time that they resurfaced inside of a large chamber beneath the water. The fourteen year old spent several minutes coughing as he sucked in great gulps of air before he felt the weight of several eyes on him.

Wiping the water from his face, Tenzou sat up to find himself surrounded by dozens of beavers; most of them right around the same size as his escorts though there were a few here and there that were larger. The absence of smaller beavers actually worried him as he recalled just how little Bizemori and Bizekuki were when compared to those that were studying him right now. And while they didn't exactly tower over him (he was roughly the same height, after all), he certainly felt rather small surrounding by them.

"He looks more like a drowned rat than a summoner," one of the beavers commented and Tenzou suddenly regretted teasing Kojimaru about being called a kitten by his summons as those words set the rest of the beavers to slapping their tails in amusement – the green eyed Chuunin was going to laugh his ass off when he inevitably learned that Tenzou had been called a drowned rat.

"I guess that means that I should fit right in with the rest of the riff-raff, ne?" Tenzou inquired once he'd stopped dwelling on his brother's future reaction as he wrung out his shirt and shook the excess water from his hair.

"It would appear that your brother isn't the only one with a bit of cheek in him," his dark furred escort chortled while more than a few of the other beavers slapped their tails a second time in response to Tenzou's retort. "Come on; let's go get you cleaned up before we take you to meet Bizezuumi-toumoku."

Tenzou was then led through a series of interconnected tunnels that were all paneled in a mishmash of different woods in no discernible pattern that he could identify. The over all effect was still beautiful despite, or maybe even because, of the randomness of the multi-colored pattern. Unable to help himself, Tenzou reached out to drag his fingers along the polished planks and he nearly tripped over his feet when he received an image of a near endless maze of similar tunnels that was far larger than he had expected despite what he'd seen of the city above the water.

He was eventually led into an underwater bathhouse where he found several more beavers all soaking in a steaming pool of mud. The sight of the overgrown rodents soaking in large tub of mud actually made him grin as he recalled the number of times that Emiko had complained about him bathing in dirt when he was younger. His dark furred escort led him passed the mud pool and through a curtain of shell beads strung from strings of twisted plant fibers into the next room where a trio of heated waterfalls cascaded from the ceiling.

"We'll be back in an hour to collect you, kit," the orange furred beaver stated as he opened a cupboard door that had been seamlessly concealed in the wall near the entrance and pulled out a thick towel that looked to have been woven entirely from the soft under fur of a beaver. "Feel free to soak in the mud baths for a bit if you wish."

"You can dump your soiled clothes in the basket just outside of the door and one of the attendants will see to it that they are washed and dried before they are returned to you. You can place the rest of your belongings in one of the shelves along the north wall; no one will bother them," the dark furred beaver added before the two of them disappeared.

Tenzou didn't waste anytime in stripping out of his chilly wet clothes; he'd never been overly fond of cold water like Kojimaru. He quickly dropped the soggy garments into the basket outside of the room, rinsed himself off beneath one of the waterfalls, and headed back into the other room to slip into the mud bath. He let out a sigh of contentment as the heat immediately began seeping into his bones to wash away the lingering chill from his underwater journey; drawing more than a few chuckles from the beavers soaking alongside of him. There was also no denying that he loved the way the heated mud clung to his skin.

Forty-five minutes later, Tenzou reluctantly climbed out of the mud pool, scraped most of the mud from his skin, and returned to the waterfall room to rinse the last of the mud from his body before he used the towel he'd been provided to dry himself off. He'd barely finished toweling his hair dry when a young beaver with light brown fur that was a good foot shorter than him stepped into the room carrying his now clean clothes. Tenzou thanked the beaver for cleaning his clothes as he accepted the bundle back. He then quickly dressed and collected the rest of his belongings before he headed back out the way he'd come in to look for his escorts.

He found them waiting just outside of the mud room for him. They gave him a brief inspection before they once again began leading him through the maze of paneled tunnels. After a while, they came to a set of stairs and began climbing upwards and Tenzou briefly trailed his fingers along the wall to get his bearings and quickly learned that they were climbing the central most tower of the city. At the end of the climb, they reached what could only be described as an indoor garden paradise.

The walls were covered with several different flowering vines, the floors were carpeted with spongy mosses, and every where he looked there were all manner of shrubs and bonsai trees. He let out a soft whistle of appreciation even as he immediately compared the luscious room to Kojimaru and Kosuke's gardens. There was even a gentle waterfall pouring down one wall into a large pond filled with brightly colored guppies that were the size of his palm. Seated just beside the pond in a knarled chair made from twisted oak branches was the largest beaver Tenzou had seen to date.

Even seated, the beaver towered over both Tenzou and his two escorts and if Tenzou had to guess he'd estimate the creature to be at least nine feet tall and close to five feet wide. And even though the large beaver's natural layer of fat beneath his skin made him look soft, there was no mistaking the corded muscles that lined that bulky body. Perched upon the majestic beaver's head was a crown woven from young bulrushes; their sausage like flowers still attached to the stems. Over top of the reed vest (that all of the beavers seemed to wear) this beaver wore a long cape made from the cured hide of an alligator.

"Honored Bizezuumi-toumoku, allow us to present our newest summoner; Tenzou no Mokuton," the orange furred beaver intoned as he and the dark furred beaver swept into low bows and dramatically gestured to Tenzou with both fore-paws. Tenzou only had a brief moment to wonder how the beaver had known his name (there had been a glaring lack of introductions on both sides, after all, and he'd not given his true name to either of the twins the night before) before his escort spoke up again. "Summoner Tenzou, behold the venerable Chief of the Beaver Clan, Bizezuumi no Gama."

"It is an honor to meet you, Bizezuumi-toumoku," Tenzou greeted as he offered the giant beaver a respectful bow.

"You are much smaller than my nephew and niece led me to believe you were," Bizezuumi commented as he leaned forward to study Tenzou with deep brown eyes. "Tell me, kit; how many seasons have you lived?"

"I'm fourteen years old, if that's what you're asking," Tenzou replied with a slight frown of confusion.

"So young," Bizezuumi murmured with a nod. "Tell me, how did such a young kit get his hands on our summoning contract?"

"The Sandaime Hokage allowed me to select a summoning contract out of the Hokage's Vault upon my formal induction into the ANBU Corps of Konohagakure no Sato. Out of all the contracts for clans with a strong connection to the earth element, yours was the one that most appealed to me."

"Konoha…? I suppose that would explain why we have not had a summoner since the last of the Shimizu Clan fell at the end of the Second Great Shinobi War. My sister's children spoke of your ability to form furniture and other objects with your Mokuton. I would see you demonstrate this ability by growing a throne worthy of my station."

Tenzou nodded in compliance as he eyed the current chair that the chief was sitting in and mentally calculated the dimensions of the requested throne. He then cast a brief glance around the room to take in the types of trees present before he studied the chief beaver for a second time; taking note of the bulrush crown. The fourteen year old then hummed a single note to himself as an idea began to form in his mind. He studied the picture that had formed in his mind for a few seconds before he nodded again and began running through a sequence of hand seals to help him focus his chakra into the necessary shape.

At the end of the sequence, he slammed his hands onto the moss in front of him and held onto the image in his mind as he felt his chakra surge up to grow the required throne in a burst of smoke. When the smoke cleared, it revealed a large, heavy chair that was made up of sinuous curves that looked as if it had been formed entirely out of bulrushes. It sat low to the ground on four wooden spheres that were six inches in diameter and carved over with a woven bulrush leaf pattern. The chair itself was cup shaped with wide sweeping arms that had the appearance of windswept bulrush leaves that flowed into a tall back with a trio of bulrush flowers that would sit directly over top of the chief's head when he sat in the chair.

"Intricate but not overbearing and overall pleasing to the eye; you've also incorporated my personal sigil into the design and made it so that it would fit nicely with the rest of the room," Bizezuumi mused as he rose to his feet to inspect the newly grown throne. The giant beaver than settled himself into the new throne and gave a soft surprised hum before he added, "Surprisingly comfortable too. I am impressed. And yet you claim that you are not of the Senju. Will you tell me how it is possible for you to carry the Kekkei Genkai of one of Konoha's most famous clans if you are not of their clan?"

Tenzou hesitated for a brief moment before he quietly admitted, "I was not born with my Kekkei Genkai. I was stolen from my home and experimented on as a child alongside many others. My brother and I were the only survivors."

"I see. Was the experimentation you underwent condoned by your Hokage?"

"Chigau; it was the Sandaime Hokage that saved my brother and I from Orochimaru's hidden labs. He saw to it that we were both given to new families who would protect us. We were even hidden from the Hokage and the rest of the village for eight years so that no one would be tempted to steal us away in order to use us for our Kekkei Genkai or turn us into weapons."

"And yet you are a shinobi; by definition that would make you weapons," Bizezuumi pointed out.

"That is one way to look at it but we do not see ourselves as weapons. Our guardians took us in, made us part of their families, gave us back a piece of ourselves when they gave us names, and taught us how to protect ourselves. Our sensei built on what we knew and risked his life and job to protect us by hiding our true abilities so that no one would look twice at us during the Third Great Shinobi War. We may have been raised as shinobi but we grew up human with proper families that cared for us and not for our abilities."

"Wise words from one so young," Bizezuumi mused as he studied Tenzou once more. "I will allow you to keep the contract; however, you must spend this next week forming a connection with three member of my clan and gain their permission to call upon them as your primary contacts. The only stipulation is that all three beavers must be at least sixty seasons old; meaning that you may not count my niece and nephew amongst the three required even if my sister gives you her permission to summon the twins from time to time. I have no wish to see the children of my clan fighting before they are old enough to wield their first hammers."

"Thank you, Bizezuumi-toumoku," Tenzou replied as he quickly bowed to the beaver a second time in order to hide his surprise over how easily he'd gained the chief's permission to keep the contract; he'd expected to be put through some kind of harrowing test to prove his worth – like fighting their strongest warrior or something along those lines.

Tenzou was led out of the chief's throne room at that point and taken to a room in a tower near the edge of the great city that had been prepared especially for him. There he would find a small meal entirely comprised of fruits, nuts, and edible flowers waiting for him alongside of Bizemori and Bizekuki. That was when he learned that his orange furred escort was actually the twin's father whose name was Bizekoeda. His dark furred escort, on the other hand, turned out to be the youngest of Bizezuumi's seven sons and his name was Bizekuro.

After the small meal, Tenzou was led on a tour of the more popular spots of the city by Bizekoeda while playing pony for the twins (who he learned were only six seasons old – which was the equivalent of one and a half years). As they moved through the city, he was introduced to so many beavers that their names and faces all blurred together. During the tour, Tenzou also learned a lot about the Beaver Clan and in turn told his guides a bit about himself; sharing his hobbies, some of his training, a few funny stories about him and his brother, and his dreams for the future.

He was rather pleased to learn that aside from sharing an avid love of architecture and woodworking with the semi-aquatic mammals, the beavers were experts at building traps and gardening. They were fairly good trackers too, though he learned that the otters actually surpassed them in that department. He was a bit sad to learn that they didn't really have any warriors in the clan, since he had long dreamed of fighting beside a summons, but he didn't let it get him down for long. And the beavers could fight, if needs be, they just didn't devote their entire lives to fighting as they were builders by nature.

Over the course of the next six days, Tenzou would actually learn that the otters and beavers had a closer working relationship than he and Kojimaru had first suspected after their first contact with their summonses. It turned out that the Otter Clan was made up almost entirely of warriors and sailors and they offered protection for the Beaver Clan from the perils of nature (such as alligators, tigers, and other predators). In return, the beavers were responsible for building, maintaining, and repairing the otters' homes and ships. Both clans then shared the responsibility of keeping the river free of debris and dangerous predators so that they could travel freely between their two homes.

He also learned quite a bit about the methods that the beavers used to construct their buildings, bridges, walkways, and the otter's ships. On top of that, he'd garnered quite a bit of information on dirt-free gardening methods that he intended to pass along to Kojimaru when he finally saw him again. The last thing he learned from the beavers was how to hold his breath underwater for upwards of fifteen minutes without needing any kind of artificial breathing device.

By his last day in Lodge City (the name of the sprawling beaver city), Tenzou had formed a close rapport with Bizekoeda (who was one of twelve Chief Architects within the clan), Bizekuro (who he'd learned was a Journeyman Gardener) and Bizerikui (an Apprentice Trapper that was only eighty-three seasons old). He'd also befriended Bizehana (the Chief Beaver's sister and mother to the twins) and been given permission to summon the twins on occasion so long as he only summoned them within the safety of Konoha's walls until they reached sixty summers. There were a number of other beavers that he'd befriended as well but he was not as close to them as he was to the others.

And while he would miss spending time in the great city, he was looking forward to seeing Kojimaru after the long separation.

The trip back down the river was filled with laughter and teasing as his three summoning partners escorted him back to the same clearing that he and Kojimaru had first appeared in. Normally, he would have been sent straight back to Konoha from Lodge City but because Tenzou had not exactly arrived alone, they were taking him to meet up with Kojimaru. That would also allow the two clans to share notes about their new summoners (read gossip); providing that his brother had also passed whatever tests he'd been given.

Not that he doubted his brother's capability; it was more that he worried Kojimaru's stubbornness would crop up at the wrong time. The green-eyed teen could dig his feet in over the silliest of things at times; such as his refusal to gulp tea or his ongoing grudge against the Konoha Hospital for serving inferior tea (though Tenzou had long suspected that the tea grudge was his brother's way of disguising his fear of hospitals and medics in general). Thinking about Kojimaru's tea obsession made Tenzou briefly wonder if any of the otters had been foolish enough to interrupt his brother's tea time or worse, attempted to take his tea away when he inevitably dragged the drinking of a single cup out for hours.

Tenzou chuckled to himself as he recalled the pranks that he'd helped Kojimaru pull in retaliation for those who dared interfere with his tea drinking through the years. He'd never forget the look of pure shock on the Yondaime's face that one time when Minato had walked right into the bucket of fire ants that he and Kojimaru had set up to prank another Chuunin. Of course, it was the Kiiroi Senko's girlish screams that immediately followed the brief moment of shock that Tenzou recalled most clearly. He and Kojimaru had laughed themselves sick at the time; or at least, they had once they'd gotten over their terror at catching the renowned blond Jounin in their prank by sheer chance.

The brown eyed teen was pulled out of his memories as he felt Bizerikui shift beneath him when the stocky beaver climbed up the side of the bank; they'd reached their destination. As he slipped off of the beaver's broad back, Tenzou searched the immediate area for any sign of his brother but he was disappointed when he learned that they had beat the others to the clearing. He wouldn't stay disappointed for long though as the sound of several voices raised in song soon reached his ears and he hurried back to the river to peer downstream.

Tenzou blinked his eyes in shock before he let out a snort of laughter as he took in the miniature ice ship that was being hauled upriver by a pair of otters. Standing on the bowsprit of the small ship was Kojimaru dressed in a new knee length sharkskin vest, a necklace made of shark's teeth, a pirate captain's hat with a long feathered plume, and a seaweed eye patch. Behind the green eyed teen, there were several more otters all seated side by side at two pairs of long oars; each of them rowing in tandem to the rhythm of the shanty they were singing.

As they drew closer, Tenzou could just make out the words of the song…

_What would you do with a drunken otter?  
What would you do with a drunken otter?  
What would you do with a drunken otter, ear-lie in the morning?_

It was at that point that Kojimaru's boyish tenor rang out loud and clear with the next refrain…

_Put 'em in a dress and make 'em kiss the captain.  
Put 'em in a dress and make 'em kiss the captain.  
Put 'em in a dress and make 'em kiss the captain, ear-lie in the morning._

As the group on the water spied their small group, the otters spontaneously changed the next verse to…

_What would you do with a drunken beaver?  
What would you do with a drunken beaver?  
What would you do with a drunken beaver, ear-lie in the morning?_

It was Kojimaru's reply that set the three beavers to yelling in protest though…

_Lock em' in the stocks and paddle his bottom.  
Lock em' in the stocks and paddle his bottom.  
Lock em' in the stocks and paddle his bottom, ear-lie in the morning._

The otters and Kojimaru roared with laughter in response to the beavers' reaction as they heaved the ice ship over to the bank and quickly secured it to a partially submersed log that was kept there for just that purpose. The otters then poured over the side of the ship and rushed up to cheerfully greet the trio of beavers that had come with Tenzou. Tenzou left them to their reunion as he dashed up to the ship as Kojimaru formed an ice slide and slid down from the bowsprit.

"Still in one piece I see," Tenzou commented as he wrapped his older but shorter brother in a brief hug; being mindful of the sharkskin vest his brother now wore thanks to the warning Kojimaru had given him about the hide's tendency to shave off skin after his spar against Kawanari.

"Just barely," Kojimaru snorted in reply as he readily returned the hug. "And not for a lack of effort on the otters' part. How was your stay with the beavers?"

"It was great, you should see the dam they built… and their city is bigger than all of Konoha and at least half of it is all underwater. You'd love their gardens!"

"Did you pass their test?"

"Yeah, I passed the Chief's test; he just ordered me to grow him a new throne when I first arrived and then asked me a bunch of questions before he told me I could keep the contract. What about you?"

"Lucky teme, my test involved going on a shark hunt to deal with a pair of juvenile great white sharks that had been terrorizing the Clan's kelp beds for the past few weeks," Kojimaru groused with a grimace. "Damn near lost an arm to one of the monsters when I rescued an overeager apprentice hunter from certain death. I got the teme that bit me back though; I'm wearing his skin and teeth."

"Ouch; how long were you laid up for after that? Did the shark damage your eye too? Is that why you're wearing an eye patch?"

"Just a couple of hours longer than normal; I had to wait for one of their healers to yank a couple of broken teeth out of my bone after I shattered the shark's jaw when I fought my way free. No, the shark didn't injure my eye; I put the patch on before I left the Holt as a joke."

"Does that mean you passed their test?"

"Yes, I passed the test; got the tattoo and everything to prove it."

"Tattoo…? What does a tattoo have to do with anything?"

"The beavers didn't give you a summoning tattoo?" Kojimaru asked in response as he unbuttoned and rolled up his left sleeve to bare his left forearm.

There in dark blue ink that stood out starkly against Kojimaru's pale skin was a barbed harpoon that stretched from elbow to wrist. The head of the harpoon looked more like a double barbed fish hook that had been straightened; one barb on the right about a half an inch from the point and the other barb on the left a full inch below the first one. Wrapped around the shaft of the harpoon in three loose loops that stretched the full width of Kojimaru's inner arm was a pale green rope. Just beneath the shaft there was a very faint pair of kanji.

"Same no Kouji…?" Tenzou read out loud as he peered closely at the two kanji.

"Nani…?" Kojimaru demanded as he yanked his arm back and peered closely at the tattoo. The green eyed teen then snarled in irritation before he brandished his tattooed arm and indignantly yelled, "Kawarashi, I'm going to skin your otousan alive and use his ancient hide to polish my swords!"

One of the young otters that had accompanied his brother spun around and stared at Kojimaru in confusion before he burst out laughing as his eyes landed the tattoo. That, of course, set the other otters off as they were all apparently in on the joke.

"At least he didn't include koneko as well, ne?" the otter identified as Kawarashi replied once he'd brought his laughter under control. "Don't worry; that one is not permanent anyway."

Kojimaru grumbled under his breath as he sent the otters a glare before he glared down at the tattoo again as he quickly recovered it with his sleeve. Tenzou couldn't help but notice the slight flush that was creeping up the back of his brother's neck and he couldn't resist asking, "New nickname, I take it?"

"I know where you sleep," Kojimaru deadpanned as he whipped his head around to glare at Tenzou next.

"Just asking," Tenzou shot back as he raised both hands in surrender. "It is a rather nice looking tattoo though." When Kojimaru growled in response to the compliment, Tenzou quickly changed the subject by asking, "What is the tattoo for anyway? I don't recall Yagi mentioning anything about summoning tattoos."

"It negates the need for me to use hand seals when summoning specific individuals," Kojimaru replied after he spent a heartbeat eyeing Tenzou suspiciously. "I just have to smear blood on it and focus the correct amount of chakra into the tattoo and it will bring forth the individual I called. The blue ink used on the harpoon was actually made from the chakra and blood of the three individuals that I am allowed to summon through the tattoo and each loop of the rope has the kanji of one of their names woven into it to provide the focus. I can summon them normally too, but it would take far more chakra to do so because all three of them are rather powerful individuals."

"Wow, you must have really made an impression on the otters then; I am limited in who I can summon at the moment."

"I saved the life of the chief's only son," Kojimaru quietly admitted. "I didn't even know that the otter I had saved was in any way related to the chief until we returned to the village with the dead sharks. The chief is one of the three I can summon through the tattoo; he claimed that he owed me a life debt for selflessly protecting his only son and putting myself in harm's way to do so. I tried to tell him there was no debt because I would have done the same for any of the hunters with us that day but he was even more determined to claim a debt between us after that."

Kojimaru then gave Tenzou a wry grin as he added, "Personally, I think Kawakaze-toumoku just wanted an excuse to get out of the holt every now and then because he's been bored to tears after sitting behind a desk for the past two decades."

The two of them shared a quiet laugh over that observation before they waded into the throng of otters and beavers to make a few introductions and say their goodbyes before they returned to Konoha.

* * *

**Translations:** Japanese to English

Bizehana – mother of the twins, Bizezuumi's sister; bizebaze (beaver) + hana (flower)  
Bizekoeda – father of the twins, Chief Architect; bizebaze (beaver) + koeda (twig)  
Bizekuki – twin sister of Bizemori; bizebaze (beaver) + kuki (stem)  
Bizekuro – seventh son of Bizezuumi, Journeyman Gardener; bizebaze (beaver) + kuro (black)  
Bizemori – twin brother of Bizekuki; bizebaze (beaver) + mori (forest)  
Bizerikui – Apprentice Trapper of the beaver clan; bizebaze (beaver) + kirikui (stump)  
Bizezuumi – the Chief of the Beaver Clan &amp; uncle to the twins; bizebaze (beaver) + mizuumi (lake)  
Bizezuumi no Gama – Bizezuumi of the Cattail or Bizezuumi of the Bulrush (not toad, though gama also means toad)  
Kawakaze – Chief of the Otter Clan; kawauso (river otter) + kaze (wind)  
Kawanari – one-eyed otter; kawauso (river otter) + kaminari (thunder)  
Kawarashi – Kawanari's son; kawauso (river otter) + arashi (storm)  
Kiiroi Senko – Yellow Flash  
Koneko – kitten  
Same no Kouji – Shark Bait (Kojimaru's new nickname)  
Sugoi – wonderful/wow/awesome or dreadful/terrible (depending on how it is said)  
Toumoku – chief/head/leader

**Notes: **

Guppy size – yes, I am fully aware that guppies don't naturally grow more than two inches (and that's if you include the tales of the males) in r/l. I used to raise guppies and a wide assortment of tropical and non-tropical fish. My reasoning for there being larger than life guppies is the same as there being larger than life toads, beavers, otters, and other animals in the Naruto-verse. There's obviously something in the water in that world if more than half of the summoned creatures all seem to tower over cities.

Otters' Shanty – was based off of the old sea shanty that I believe is titled 'Drunken sailor' but don't quote me on that.

Seasons – when used as a measure of time, four seasons equal one year (just in case that wasn't obvious).

Shimizu Clan – a randomly selected clan from which the Beaver Contract was taken during the 2nd War since none of the Ame Canon characters were given surnames in the manga or anime bar Rokushou Aoi who was originally from Konoha in the first place. Shimizu means pure water.

* * *

**11-15-15:** _Minor edits made to chapter to fix spelling/grammar mistakes and removed unnecessary author's notes._


	19. The Captain

**Disclaimer:** _All HP characters are the property of JKR, the WB, and respective publishing companies and all Naruto characters are the property of Masashi Kishimoto. This is nothing more than a simple FanFiction that I have written. I have made no money from this or any of the other stories I have posted on this or other sites._

**Warnings:** _Mild to moderate violence, character death, alternate universe (i.e. kiss canon goodbye), OCC behaviors and personalities, a number of original characters and obscure canon characters to flesh out family trees, random chosen last names to give a number of characters surnames, and who knows what else._

**AN:** _This story is self-beta'd; so there may be occasional grammatical or spelling errors that crop up every now and then and for those I apologize in advance._

* * *

Chapter Nineteen: The Captain

_February 05, 0295 AtD, 8:57 AM  
Konohagakure no Sato, Hi no Kuni_

Hiruzen drew in deeply of the burning tobacco that filled his pipe and held the lungful of smoke in for a full count of fifteen seconds before he slowly exhaled through his nose as he perused one of the two files in his hand. Green eyes set in a pale face beneath a mop of inky hair stared out at him from the picture; a clear spark of mischief lurking in their verdant depths and belying the serious look the teenager had affected for his ANBU ID Photo. A snort of amusement escaped Hiruzen as he recalled the latest stunt the gaki had pulled just a month earlier.

The impish teen had managed to bond with a rather intimidating otter that loved to push the kid's buttons each time they trained together; a weekly occurrence based upon Kasai's report on the status of each of the newest summoning contracts that had been signed. Apparently, the otter had managed to push Kojimaru just a little too far and the seafaring mammal had ended up trussed up like a roast pig on the barbecue at an Akimichi Food Festival. Hiruzen suspected that one of the Akimichi (most likely Chouza given Kojimaru's relationship with Shikaku and Inoichi) had lent a hand with that prank since the otter hadn't actually been harmed; well, at least not physically – poor thing was probably had nightmares about being roasted alive (or was plotting revenge).

Aside from scaring years off of his summonses (and a large number of shinobi and civilians), the teen's behavior was exemplary and his flawless mission record (which he shared with his self claimed brother and shinobi partner) had been maintained. The pair had also been very attentive to their training; pushing themselves with the same stubborn drive that had marked most of their shinobi careers.

Taking another puff from his pipe, Hiruzen set both of the files down on his desk and shut the folder to hide its contents from the casual eye; he didn't need to skim through the second file, he already knew what it would say. A quick glance at the clock let him know that both teens would be arriving within five minutes; they'd officially finished their ANBU training just four days earlier and it was time to decide exactly what he was going to do with the pair. Well, he'd already decided what he would be doing with them but now it was time to impart that information to them.

He then turned his thoughts to the trainer that had been assigned to oversee their official ANBU training (which had been considerably different than the previous training they'd received within the ANBU Facility; if only because they'd not been taught any of the ANBU Protocols or ANBU specific jutsu during their previous lessons).

ANBU Trainer Yagi had been with the ANBU Corps for almost as long as Hiruzen had been Hokage. The man had no life outside of the ANBU and had, in fact, not once taken off his mask since the day he'd donned it. Not surprising when one considers that the man was a former high level missing nin from Amegakure that had willingly spied upon his old village for Konoha during the Second Great Shinobi War. Hiruzen had been the one to grant the man amnesty before turning him over to Akimichi Torifu.

Torifu in turn, had made the man disappear (figuratively speaking) in order to prevent Hanzou from demanding his head at the end of the war. In his place, Yagi had been born. After proving himself loyal to Konoha (in return for sparing his life after his relative usefulness ran out at the end of the war and for the chance they'd given him at a new life) during his first five years in the Corps, Yagi had been recruited as a trainer. Being assigned as a trainer was one of the highest honors that could be bestowed upon an ANBU Operative because it meant trusting them to train the next generation of ANBU Guards – a duty that could make or break the Corps.

Yagi had again proved his worth and his loyalty as the man had turned the rookies he was assigned to train into some of the finest ANBU Operatives on the force. The man never coddled his trainees; he pushed them hard but never actually pushed any of them to the point that they broke under his training. He also made an honest effort to remain approachable in order to insure that his trainees felt comfortable enough to go to him with their problems; since the sooner a problem was noticed, the sooner it could be dealt with. It was a method that worked well.

Hiruzen had been very pleased when he learned that Yagi had been assigned to train the two survivors of Orochimaru's Kekkei Genkai experiments. Knowing that the two boys would be in good hands had eased some of the guilt he still felt over the actions of his traitorous student. It also helped to ease the guilt he felt about using the two boys to make Konoha stronger – a guilt he felt for using far too many of Konoha's children to make Konoha stronger.

Pushing his regrets back to the depths of his soul where they would not cloud his mind needlessly, Hiruzen glanced up at the clock a second time and noted that the pair would be arriving any second now. He'd barely pulled his eyes from the clock when his current Chuunin secretary stuck her head through the door to state, "Hokage-sama? Your nine o'clock appointment has just arrived. Shall I send them in?"

"Yes," Hiruzen replied as he took one last puff on his pipe before he emptied the bowl in the ash tray and set the pipe off to one side to cool.

The two rookies entered a handful of seconds later; their masks both glinting orange and white in the sunlight pouring through the eastern window of the office. Hiruzen had to fight back a grin when he noticed that both teens were walking in perfect synchronization; their strides matching perfectly right down to the swing of their arms. It was rather amusing to watch when one considered the fact that the boys were separated by a height difference of at least four and a half inches. If not for their differences in height and coloring, the two could easily be mistaken for twins.

Their attitudes were even eerily similar at times.

And at the same time, they were very much their own persons.

They had their own fears (mostly). They had their own hobbies. They had chosen separate summoning contracts. They both focused on slightly different areas in their training even if they both trained in the exact same disciplines. And they both tended to behave differently when stressed or nervous.

And yet, there were times when they appeared to be one mind, one soul in two bodies.

One might be forgiven for mistaking the pair for lovers if not for their ages and the obvious brotherly behavior they exhibited; the two of them constantly teasing one another, standing up for one another, and daring one another to perform fool stunts. There was also the fact that those that were foolish enough to imply that the pair shared a more intimate relationship inevitably found themselves publicly humiliated and given lectures on the inappropriateness of incestuous relationships. An implication that the two boys well and truly believed they were full-blooded brothers.

Hiruzen supposed, in a way, it was true. They shared blood. Specifically, they both shared Kojimaru's and the Shodai Hokage's blood. The fact that they were both listed and each other's only living blood and organ donor was probably an indication that they also now shared Tenzou's blood as well. It wouldn't surprise him if they did.

Hiruzen focused on the pair of teens in front of him once more as they stopped in front of his desk and bowed to him in unison. Hiruzen had to hold back another snort of amusement as he briefly wondered whether or not the two of them spent their free time practicing how to move in sync or if it just came to them naturally. He wouldn't put it passed them to do it on purpose to throw people off.

"Good morning, gentlemen," Hiruzen greeted warmly as he buried his amusement for the moment. He then silently signaled for the unseen ANBU members currently on guard duty to clear his office before he activated one of the temporary privacy barriers that Jiraiya provided him with whenever he was in the village. "Please remove your masks."

Hiruzen was pleased when neither teen showed any hesitation in following his request as it let him know that they trusted him. He briefly examined their faces before he addressed them once more, "Thank you. I called the two of you here today in order to give you your first assignment as full-fledged members of the ANBU Corps. As the youngest members of the Corps currently on payroll, Kasai and I have decided that the two of you will be added to the guard rotations for the village until there is an opening on one of the Hunter Nin squads for both of you; since your specialties involve capture and retrieval."

"Additionally, after reviewing your files; I have decided to promote both of you to the rank of Tokubetsu Jounin. The promotions will apply to both your hidden identities and your ANBU personas; which will allow you far more leeway when it comes to non-ANBU related missions. Your new status as Tokubetsu Jounin will also allow you to work directly with the T and I Department without requiring you to apply for a position within the department. Do either of you have any questions about your new assignment or your new status?"

"No, but I do have an unrelated question," Kojimaru hesitantly stated after casting a brief glance at the other teen.

"Oh? What did you wish to ask me?"

"The summoning clan that I am contracted to has repeatedly expressed a desire to work with me even when I am not wearing my mask since they first learned that my brother and I are essentially leading two lives. I am uncertain of how I can accomplish that without compromising my identity outside of the mask since while I have appeared in two places as both myself and as Tora, I have never interacted with myself in either persona. I was hoping that maybe you had a suggestion that might help."

"And does the clan that you are contracted with also wish to make such an arrangement?" Hiruzen asked of the taller teen after taking a brief moment to digest the question.

"It has been mentioned once or twice but the beavers have not been as adamant about it as the otters. Part of that, I would imagine, would have to do with the fact that Kojimaru has a stronger working relationship with the otter clan and they require him to spend more time training with them than the beavers require of me."

"Is that so? I was under the impression that you were not interested in such a close working relationship with your chosen summons, Kojimaru-kun. Would you be willing to tell me what happened to change your mind?"

"The otters are a warrior clan; they love to fight. They are also very big on teamwork and part of the agreement I made with them when their chief granted me permission to call upon any member of the clan was that I would not summon a member of the clan that I have not trained alongside to a fight. So, I've spent a lot of time training with their younger warriors under the watchful eye of my otter mentor as I learn their fighting style. And it wasn't that I didn't want a close partnership with the otters… I was just not all that comfortable with the blood sacrifice involved."

"I see. And just how close of a relationship have you developed with the Otter Clan?"

"I received a summoning tattoo immediately after I passed my test and I was adopted into the clan two months ago."

"Will you tell me about the test they gave you and what it was you did to impress them at the time?" Hiruzen inquired as his mind supplied memories of the summoning tattoos that Orochimaru and Jiraiya both wore. "I would also like to see your tattoo, if you don't mind."

"Several of the veteran hunters took me and trio of young warriors out shark hunting and I saved the life of the chief's only son when he nearly got himself eaten by one of the two sharks we'd been tasked to kill," Kojimaru replied as he stripped off his left glove to bare his left forearm as he stepped up to the desk and presented the summoning tattoo for inspection.

Hiruzen climbed to his feet and leaned over his desk to get a better look. In dark blue ink that stood out starkly against the teen's pale skin was a barbed harpoon that stretched from elbow to wrist. The head of the harpoon looked more like a double barbed fish hook that had been straightened; one barb on the right about a half an inch from the point and the other barb on the left a full inch below the first one. Wrapped around the shaft of the harpoon in three loose loops that stretched the full width of Kojimaru's inner arm was a pale green rope.

It was exquisite work and unlike Jiraiya and Orochimaru's tattoos, far less obvious in its nature. In fact, if the child had not come right out and told him that it was a summoning tattoo, he never would have suspected it was anything other than a rather detailed tattoo.

He was about to sit back down in his chair when he caught a glimpse of black on Kojimaru's left palm from beneath his curled fingers. Curious, Hiruzen snagged Kojimaru's left wrist in one hand and used his other hand to uncurl the teen's fingers so he could get a clear look at the boy's palm. To his surprise, another tattoo was revealed; this one a stylized paw-print of an otter track that took up nearly the entire palm. Hiruzen would have thought it to be the teen's summoning tattoo if not for the fact that Kojimaru had hidden it while he'd been examining the harpoon inked onto his arm.

"Does this tattoo hold any significance as well? And is there any particular reason why you were trying to hide it?"

"It symbolizes my adoption into the Otter Clan and I wasn't trying to hide it; I just didn't think you would be interested in seeing it when you'd specifically asked to see my summoning tattoo."

"I prefer to be aware of any and all identifying marks on any of my shinobi but most especially on those that are part of the ANBU Corps since anyone catching a glimpse of those marks could identify one of my shinobi while they are wearing their mask; something that could potentially lead to them being compromised while on a mission," Hiruzen pointed out as he released Kojimaru's arm and sat down. He then dropped that subject as he brought the conversation back around to address the child's original concerns. "I believe that we've gotten off track; you were looking for a solution to a dilemma involving a request of your summonses, correct?"

"Hai, Hokage-sama."

"How willing do you think the otters would be to work with you on a ruse designed to introduce your two personas to one another in order to facilitate a way for you to call upon the otters while you are wearing your usual disguise?"

"Very willing; they are the ones that are pushing for me to call on them more often."

"Then here is what I suggest you do; the next time you summon one of the otters, have him lead you through the village to a clone of yourself wearing your usual disguise. There have been past cases where a summons has requested a second summoner if their current one is not powerful enough to summon the boss or if the summoner does not have a child to pass the contract to upon his death. So, no one would question you being led by your summons through the village in search of one that matches whatever criteria they use to select an appropriate summoner. "

"That would also firmly establish Tora as a separate identity from you and allow the two of you to be seen working together; since people would expect you to have to take the time to mentor yourself on the politics involved in being a summoner of the Otter Clan," Hiruzen finished as he picked up his pipe and filled the bowl with a fresh pinch of dried tobacco.

"Won't that increase the chances of people linking me with myself?" Kojimaru inquired worriedly. "I mean, someone is bound to note the similarities in how I look both in and out of my disguise."

"Not if you keep your mask on and add a couple of inches to your height with a henge while you are 'training' yourself to summon the otters in order to further muddle the tracks, so to speak."

"I suppose that might work, so long as the otters are willing to go along with it and I can't see them refusing."

"Good, let me know how it turns out. In the mean time, did either of you have any other questions? No…? Then the two of you are dismissed. Kasai will contact you with your guard schedules once we've adjusted the rotations to include the two of you."

The two boys hastily bowed to Hiruzen before they replaced their masks and left the office the moment he dropped the privacy barrier. The Sandaime Hokage felt his regular guards return to their assigned posts a heartbeat later as he tucked away the two files on his desk and began working his way through the pile of paperwork that lived on his desk while he waited for his next appointment to arrive.

* * *

_July 29, 0295 AtD, 4:33 PM  
Konohagakure no Sato, Hi no Kuni_

Hatake Kakashi (aka ANBU code name Inu-teichou, Sharingan no Kakashi, Kopi Ninja no Kakashi, and genius son of the Konoha no Shiroi Kiba) stalked through the halls of the ANBU Facility with a snarl twisting his lips beneath both of his masks. He was in a foul mood; his last mission had ended in a complete mess because of a rookie mistake one of his subordinates had made. The idiot in question had not only managed to lose his head (literally) but he'd also cost the life of another squad member and his actions had seen both Kakashi and the remaining member of his team severely injured as they fought their way free of the attack.

The only redeeming factor was that the mission objective had been completed before everything had gone to hell in a hand basket. That did nothing to dampen Kakashi's temper, however. He absolutely hated the fact that he was going to have to replace two squad members. Replacing squad members meant training two new people up to his standards and dealing with rookie mistakes out in the field at crucial moments. Even worse was the fact that he'd lost half of his team on his first official mission as an ANBU Captain and his reputation was going to take a hit for the losses.

Part of the seventeen year old Jounin wished his old squad captain had never retired from the Corps; Tori had been a damned good shinobi and a great captain. Kakashi had been honored when he'd been selected to take Tori's place as the captain of their squad when the man had retired six months ago. Unfortunately, the replacement that Tori had chosen to fill the empty space on their squad had been a closet idiot and it had cost Kakashi two members of his squad. If the idiot hadn't gotten himself killed with his own idiocy, Kakashi might well have been tempted to kill the man himself.

Kakashi growled in the back of his throat as he turned the last corner and marched up to Kasai's office. He kicked open the door without bothering to knock, walked up to Kasai's desk, slammed the black scroll containing the body of his squad's target and his written report down on the desk, and curtly declared, "Nezumi made his last rookie mistake and got both himself and Panda killed in the process. I dropped Taka off in the Infirmary to have his injuries looked at on my way here."

"How serious were his injuries and did you have your injuries attended to yet?" Kasai inquired as he took Kakashi's outburst in stride – nothing ever seemed to faze his supervisor.

"Taka got a bit banged up and he lost quite a bit of blood but he should be fine in a couple of weeks. As for my injury, it's just a couple of scratches; I dealt with them before we got back to the village."

"I best not find out that you're neglecting your health again or I will suspend you for a month without pay and see to it that the medics tie you to a bed for the duration of your suspension. In the mean time, go find Inoichi, show him what happened, and then get your ass home and get some rest. I don't want to see you back here for your debriefing for at least two days. That will give me enough time to put together a potential list of replacements for you to go over."

"Hai, Kasai-sama," Kakashi replied with a grimace; he hated it when Yamanaka Inoichi peeked into his head to view his memories but unfortunately he didn't have a choice unless he wished to spend the afternoon entertaining Morino Ibiki instead. The bearlike head of the T and I Department would purposefully draw the debriefing out just to make him suffer for wasting his time with something as trivial as a mental assessment when he had undoubtedly had paperwork to do.

Two hours later, Kakashi returned to his assigned quarters within the ANBU Facility where he immediately stripped out of his ruined uniform and pulled off the blood soaked bandages that were snugly wrapped around his abdomen and left thigh. He then took a long, hot shower to wash away the old blood and filth that coated him before he stepped out of the shower and spent several minutes inspecting his injuries. Once he was certain there were no signs of infection, Kakashi smeared the roughly stitched gashes with antibiotic cream and rewrapped them in fresh bandages.

After taking a moment to gauge his current physical health and the amount of effort it would take him to get home, he decided to just crash right there in his room. Decision made, he pulled the worn old futon out of his locker and unceremoniously dumped it on the floor before he grabbed the equally worn pillow and blankets. He then kicked the futon open, made himself as comfortable as he could with his injuries aching, and promptly passed out the moment his head touched the pillow.

Kakashi would end up sleeping for thirty-eight hours straight due to a case of mild chakra exhaustion, moderate blood loss, and his still healing injuries. He was a little irritated to discover that someone (most likely Kasai) had brought in a medic to take a look at his injuries while he was sleeping; the clean bandages, neat stitches replacing the earlier crude ones he'd sewn himself, and lingering traces of healing chakra clinging to both gashes a dead giveaway. He wasn't really surprised to learn that Kasai had come and checked on him though; the ANBU Commander had always seemed to keep an extra eye on him since the day he'd applied for a position within the Corps.

In some ways, it reminded him of the way that Namikaze Minato had watched over him from the moment he'd been assigned to Team Seven alongside of Uchiha Obito and Nohara Rin. Or the way that Sarutobi Biwako had watched over him during the years he'd spent as a ward of the Sarutobi Clan after his father committed suicide.

Thinking of those he had lost (those he had failed in his mind) over the years brought with it an old familiar pain and Kakashi pressed his hands to his face as he was assaulted by his memories of their final moments.

Obito's broken body trapped beneath the boulder that should have crushed Kakashi. Rin's dying body cooling around his arm after she'd impaled herself upon his Chidori in order to save Konoha from the Sanbi sealed inside of her. Minato standing atop the Hokage Monument while facing off against the Kyuubi coupled with the after image of his sensei and his sensei's wife sprawled on a bloody and torn field with gaping holes through their chests. Biwako's discarded body in the empty cave where Kushina had given birth to sensei's son. And Panda's body turning to ash alongside Nezumi's as both members breathed their last after Nezumi gave away their position because he'd been frightened by a grass snake.

Memories of the men and women he'd killed through the years began assaulting him next but he quickly locked those memories back into the depths of his sub consciousness while silently cursing the fact that he'd been born with an eidetic memory on top of being gifted with Obito's Sharingan. He then swallowed the grief that constantly threatened to drown him each time he thought about those he'd lost. Once he felt in control of himself, Kakashi took a quick shower, tended to his wounds, got dressed in a clean uniform, and slipped on his red and white dog mask.

He then made his way back to Kasai's office so that he could start the long, drawn out process of replacing the two members of his squad that had been lost. He would need as much time as possible with the two new members in order to whip them into shape by the time Taka was cleared to take missions again (the teen easily ignoring the fact that he too had been recently injured). The less time spent in the village where he was constantly haunted by the memories of the dead, the better as far as he was concerned.

"What are you doing here; I thought I told you that I didn't want to see you until tomorrow?" Kasai demanded the moment that Kakashi walked through the door to his office.

"I'm here for the list of potential replacements for my squad," Kakashi replied curtly as he ignored his supervisor's irritation.

"Sit," Kasai ordered around a huff of irritation as he reached down to pull a single file out of his desk. "I take it you are determined to remain part of the Hunter Division?"

"Hai."

"I suspected as much and after sorting through the prospective recruits currently not assigned to a team, I took the liberty of selecting your two new squad members for you," Kasai replied as he held the file out for Kakashi to take.

"Why am I not being allowed to select the replacements myself? I don't want to be stuck with another incompetent…"

"If you are unhappy with the pair I have selected, you are more than welcome to hunt down your own replacements but before you turn them down, you should at least open the damn file."

Kakashi scowled beneath his mask but obeyed the order as he opened the thin folder he'd been handed. He briefly wondered why there was only one dossier inside before he pushed that thought aside as he let his uncovered eye study the photographs of the two masked guards and their vaguely familiar codenames. The scowl slid off of his face and his eye brows rose in disbelief once he started skimming through the pair's qualifications and skill sets. He then began to frown in contemplation and confusion as he recalled what little he knew about the pair in question.

"Why are you keeping the two of them together when it would be far more beneficial to split them up between two squads in order to utilize their abilities to their fullest?" Kakashi inquired as he closed the file and glanced up at his commander.

"Splitting them up at this point would actually see their level of performance drop; they have been trained as a team for over a decade. Their skills are complimentary, not redundant, despite what it appears like on paper. On top of that, I have absolutely no desire to spend the rest of my life in a living hell for being the one to separate the two of them. They don't take attempts to separate them very well and those that have tried in the past regretted even thinking of splitting the two of them up. They made sure of that."

"And the reason why their file is practically empty?"

"The rest of their background and history is strictly classified," Kasai replied without an ounce of hesitation. "Access to that information is restricted by order of the Hokage and permission to view their full files is given on a need-to-know basis and at the moment, you don't need to know."

"Are their files classified because the Hokage is trying to cover up the fact that they are both bastard sons from some long lost member of the Senju Clan?"

"No. And I would advise you to not to utter that harebrained theory within their hearing or you are liable to end up with splinters in uncomfortable places. They are rather sensitive to any allusions that they are in any way related to the Senju Clan."

"Any other triggers I should worry about?"

"Yes; don't touch Tora's tea if you value your fingers and your pride, don't make insinuations that their relationship is anything other than brotherly, don't insult either of them in the presence of the other, and don't go around digging for information on them or their past behind their back. I should also warn you that both of them will not hesitate to defend any child they see being mistreated and any attempts to prevent them from intervening will earn you their ire."

"So, basically, you want me to play babysitter to a couple of high maintenance brats? Which Bingo Books have they appeared in and which villages will I have to keep them out of?"

"None and it is your job to make certain it stays that way."

"Wait, what? How the hell could they not have made it into any Bingo Book? They are more than old enough to have been involved in the war… even I appeared in at least three Bingo Books by the time the war was over!"

"And you have also been in the spotlight since the moment you earned your hitai-ate because of who your father was, which clan you became a ward of after he died, and who your Jounin sensei was when you were finally assigned to a team. A small handful of people went to great lengths to keep these two out of the spotlight; my predecessor and their Jounin sensei chief amongst them. They have lived in the shadows almost their entire lives and that is where they firmly intend to stay."

"Are they as good as the rumors say they are?"

"Better. Their mission record alone speaks for their skill; they have never failed a single mission, lost a single target or client, or gotten one of their teammates seriously injured or killed with a rookie mistake. Despite their annoying habits, strange quirks, and occasional tempers, they are a damned good pair of shinobi. And they are only going to grow stronger with time and training."

"Who is after them?" Kakashi asked quietly as he reopened the file and began studying what little information he'd been provided in more depth.

"What do you mean?" Kasai asked in a wary tone that immediately told Kakashi that he was not only on the right track but that he'd just ventured into potentially dangerous territory.

"Much of their history is considered classified, they've been associated with the Corps since they were at least ten years old (when they helped repel the siege near the end of the war), and people have gone to great lengths to keep them out of the spotlight. The only reason for doing so would be because someone dangerous is after them."

"I should have known that you'd deduce that much," Kasai growled in annoyed exasperation.

"So, who is after them?"

"That's their story to tell; if, and only if, they become part of your squad. If you want to know their secrets, you're going to have to hear it from their mouths as they are the only ones authorized to divulge that information without facing drastic repercussions for doing so outside of a direct order from the Hokage that has been signed off by me as authentic."

Kakashi let out an impressed whistled; very few village secrets required such extensive security measures. It made him wonder if he should even be considering taking the pair onto his squad. Sure, their skills were rather impressive. But were their skills worth the headaches they would undoubtedly give him down the road?

"Who trained them?"

"Yagi."

"Any chance I can see what they can do with my own eyes before I decide whether or not I want the baggage that comes with accepting them on my squad?" Kakashi inquired as he nodded in response to the answer; he knew Yagi well and trusted the man's skill and judgment – Yagi-teichou had been his ANBU Trainer back when he first joined the Corps.

"Hai, I sent for them the moment I felt you break the small monitoring seal I placed on your door to let me know when you rejoined the land of the living. They should be waiting for us upstairs."

Kakashi patently ignored the reminder that Kasai had been mothering him again as they made their way up to the main entrance to the ANBU Facility's most notorious training facility know as The Gauntlet. Patiently waiting for them right outside the door, were Tora and Kuma. Kakashi took the time to study the pair's body language as he approached them alongside of Kasai. He quickly and easily noted the silent conversation the two held in the brief glance they shared before they openly studied him in return.

Kuma's dark eyes were curious behind his bear mask while Tora's green eyes were filled with equal measures of caution and calculation. Kakashi resisted the sudden urge he felt to stand up straighter beneath the intensity of those unnaturally green eyes. Those eyes were far too old and too jaded to be the eyes of a mere fifteen year old. They were eyes that were not all that different from the eye that stared Kakashi back from the mirror whenever he saw his reflection. A heartbeat later, Tora blinked and those verdant eyes were filled with mischievousness.

Kakashi almost wondered if he'd just imagined what he'd seen in those eyes when he first glanced into them but upon brief reflection, he was certain that he had not imagined it. He could clearly see the memory in flawless detail in his mind's eye and he knew he had not mistaken the jaded look he'd seen in those verdant eyes. Now he just had to figure out whether the experiences behind that look were going to be a good thing or a bad thing for his squad. He'd just lost another two teammates and he had no plans to allow another idiot to place the life of his remaining teammate in danger.

"Good, you're both here. This is Inu-teichou; he's going to be evaluating your skills today. Inu, meet Kuma and Tora; the most annoying pair of rookies currently on staff. Have fun and if you destroy The Gauntlet a second time, I will take it out of your hides and your paychecks."

"Shall we get started?" Kakashi asked as both boys reassessed him; both of their eyes now filled with that same cynical look he'd seen in Tora's earlier.

"Hai, Inu-teichou," Kuma replied while Tora simply nodded before stepping through the door.

* * *

**Translations:** Japanese to English

Hai – yes  
Konoha no Shiroi Kiba – Konoha's White Fang  
Kopi Ninja no Kakashi – Copy Ninja Kakashi  
Nezumi – rat  
Sharingan no Kakashi – Kakashi of the Sharingan  
Taka – hawk  
Tori – bird

* * *

**11-15-15:** _Minor edits made to chapter to fix spelling/grammar mistakes and removed unnecessary author's notes._


	20. The Kidnapping

**Disclaimer:** _All HP characters are the property of JKR, the WB, and respective publishing companies and all Naruto characters are the property of Masashi Kishimoto. This is nothing more than a simple FanFiction that I have written. I have made no money from this or any of the other stories I have posted on this or other sites._

**Warnings:** _Mild to moderate violence, character death, alternate universe (i.e. kiss canon goodbye), OCC behaviors and personalities, a number of original characters and obscure canon characters to flesh out family trees, random chosen last names to give a number of characters surnames, and who knows what else._

**AN:** _This story is self-beta'd; so there may be occasional grammatical or spelling errors that crop up every now and then and for those I apologize in advance._

* * *

Chapter Twenty: The Kidnapping

_August 05, 0295 AtD, 11:03 PM  
Konohagakure no Sato, Hi no Kuni_

Kojimaru silently ghosted through the streets of Konoha in his ANBU uniform as he patrolled the sleeping village. He had less than an hour remaining before the next watch was due to relieve him and he was looking forward to going home and getting some well deserved rest. He'd had precious little rest since he and Tenzou had been placed on Inu's squad on his fifteenth birthday because Inu was training them into the ground from sunrise to sunset while they waited for their third squad member to be cleared for duty by the medical staff. On top of that, all active ANBU members within the village had been called on to patrol the village in six hour shifts after a delegation from Kumogakure turned up four days earlier in order to renegotiate the treaty between their two villages.

So between training and guard duty, Kojimaru was lucky to get three hours of sleep each night.

If not for his natural healing ability washing away his exhaustion, soothing his aching muscles, and clearing away his bruises, Kojimaru doubted he'd have survived the past five days. He was also still more than a little irked that Kasai had called them in on his birthday for that and he hoped the commander and his new captain had been enjoying the splinters he'd grown on their furniture in retaliation for ruining his birthday and making him miss his party. They'd also made them miss out on a chance to hang out with Aoba for an entire day after the older teen had taken the day off on the thirty-first just to spend time with the two of them.

The teen's mental grumbling ground to a halt in an instant as he turned the corner and stepped through the leading edge of an active, large scale genjutsu. He felt a brief sense of vertigo as the genjutsu attempted to ensnare him before the illusion melted away entirely and Kojimaru quickly shook off the familiar disorienting effect that all genjutsu caused when used on him so he could focus on his immediate surroundings. The first thing he noticed was that he was standing at the edge of the Hyuuga's Estate and that the entire street was completely deserted – a sure sign that something was wrong because the current head of the clan consistently had guards posted outside of the estate twenty-four hours a day.

Moving swiftly, Kojimaru merged into the nearest tree and headed straight for the top so he could get a clear view of the entire street and get an idea of how far the genjutsu field extended. It didn't take him long to determine that the genjutsu had been placed over the entirety of the Hyuuga Estate and extended out for at least two yards on all four sides of the large compound. That conclusion was based upon the fact that all of the normal Hyuuga guards that patrolled their estate (both inside and out) were currently scattered about the compound in unconscious heaps.

He suspected there might have been a sleeping agent used on top of the genjutsu since the Byakugan could usually see through most genjutsu the moment it was activated. His next course of action was to silently form several Moku Bunshin and send them to hunt down Inu, Tenzou, and the Hokage in order to warn them of the suspected attack. Kojimaru then slipped out of the tree and began to carefully work his way through the treetops in order to get closer to the walls of the estate as he searched for anything out of place while he waited for backup to arrive.

All of his plans to wait for backup fled the moment he caught sight of a shadowed figured slinking through the estate; the movement drew his attention immediately due to the unnatural stillness that had gripped the entire compound. He still would have waited for the others to arrive if not for the child-sized bundle that was draped over the man's shoulder. If there was one thing that pissed Kojimaru off more than someone attempting to separate him from Tenzou, it was seeing _any_one cause _any_ harm to _any_ child for _any_ reason; children were meant to be protected.

And stealing a child from their home in the dead of night using trickery was causing harm in his mind.

Incised by the crime he was witnessing, Kojimaru relaxed his iron control on his chakra and allowed his Mokuton to wake the trees. He then spent several precious seconds analyzing the man's current path in order to determine the point at which the man would be most vulnerable to the trees. At the same time, he partially merged back into the tree he was on so that he wouldn't have to worry about his silhouette being seen by the kidnapper. With each slinking step he took, the kidnapper moved closer to the ambush that Kojimaru had set for him.

The moment the man crested the wall he'd chosen to scale in his escape, the trees struck at the unsuspecting kidnapper in the blink of an eye. The kidnapper gave a soft, startled cry as his arms and legs were quickly and securely caught in the living branches of the trees while another pair of branches gently plucked the trussed up child from his shoulder. Once the child was clear, the branches pulled back until the man was stretched taunt as additional branches wrapped him tightly in their embrace from the neck down. Kojimaru melted into view the moment the man was securely wrapped up and casually slapped a chakra suppression tag right over the man's mouth; so he wouldn't have to listen to him rant and rave and so that the man couldn't alert any accomplices that were still lurking in the area.

The capture had taken less than a minute to pull off due to Kojimaru catching the man completely by surprise.

The trees delivered their tiny burden to him a moment later and Kojimaru gently unwrapped the rope from the bundle and removed the gag tied around the child's face to find Hyuuga Hiashi's not quite three year old daughter and heiress inside of the bag. The teen let out a hiss of rage that had the branches securing his prisoner tighten painfully and yanked painfully on his arms and legs before he regained control of his anger. It wouldn't do to kill the man, after all, because then Ibiki wouldn't get to play with him. Once his emotions were back under his control, Kojimaru finished untying the little heiress (who was both younger and smaller than his godson) and gently gave her a cursory inspection to insure that she hadn't been harmed.

By the time he was finished with his inspection, he found himself caught up in a pair of terrified, pupil-less lavender eyes that were filled with tears now that whatever had been keeping her unconscious had worn off. Long used to calming down Shikamaru on the rare occasions when his godson showed any emotion other than perpetual boredom (damn Nara genes), Kojimaru shifted the little girl in his arms and gently rocked her as he made soft shushing sounds and murmured soft reassurances to her.

"Maa, maa, little one; you are safe now. I won't let anyone harm you. You are far too precious for me to allow the likes of that brute to steal you away."

After a couple of minutes, the child began to relax before she curled into Kojimaru's arms, buried her face against his shoulder, wrapped her little arms around his neck, and clung to him for dear life. It was at that moment that an alarm was raised from inside of the Hyuuga Estate as the blanket genjutsu that had been layered over the compound had started to unravel the moment that Kojimaru had sealed the kidnapper's chakra. The girl in his arms let out a whimper of fright as the night was suddenly filled with angry shouts and Kojimaru gently rubbed her back and continued to whisper near silent words of comfort and assurance into her ears while he watched the estate come to life as the Hyuuga poured from their beds and pushed themselves up off the ground.

Hyuuga Hiashi came barreling out of the front gate just three minutes later with his slightly younger twin brother, Hizashi, right on his heels. Kojimaru had the trees lower him to the street directly in the path of the two men the moment he realized that they were heading for his prisoner. Hiashi pulled up so fast at Kojimaru's sudden appearance that his brother slammed into him from behind and both of them dropped their doujutsu in surprise. Kojimaru would later laugh his ass off over seeing the two rather stoic men so flustered. There was no amusement to be found in the situation at the moment though.

"Good evening, Hyuuga-sama, Hyuuga-san; you are just in time to collect a little something of yours that I found being carried off by a fool," Kojimaru stated as he fully stepped out from the shadows so that the two men could clearly see the child he held cradled in his arms.

"Hizashi, take Hinata back to her mother while I deal with the trash."

"That trash belongs to me, Hyuuga-sama," Kojimaru authoritatively growled as the man attempted to step around the teen in order to get to the man that was still trussed up in the trees.

"I will kill him for daring to lay a hand on my daughter and I will not let you stop me!" Hiashi spat back in irritation as he reactivated his Byakugan.

"If you wish to administer justice to this man for the harm he has caused your family, you will need to seek the Hokage's permission," Kojimaru countered firmly as the branches holding his prisoner pulled back and merged into the closest tree trunk to remove the man from Hiashi's direct line of sight. "Finders, keepers, Hyuuga-sama; I found him and I will keep him until I can deliver him to Ibiki for questioning. Do not attempt to interfere again. Unless you wish to spend the rest of the night explaining to Ibiki and Kasai-sama why you assaulted a member of the ANBU Corps while I take your daughter into ANBU custody?"

Hiashi froze and released his Byakugan over the dual threats as he finally noticed that his brother had not collected his daughter from Kojimaru due to the trees snagging hold of the younger twin's foot to keep him in place. Kojimaru had no wish to face an angry father without the protection that the man's daughter currently afforded him. Nor did he wish for the child to be caught up in any fight that could potentially break out if the angry Clan Head and his brother both decide to attack the teen in order to get to the prisoner.

"That won't be necessary, ANBU-san," Hiashi bit out once he'd calmed down. "Please forgive me for my earlier words; I am afraid that I allowed my concern for my daughter's safety and my anger at the man responsible for kidnapping her to cloud my judgment."

"No forgiveness is necessary, Hyuuga-sama; I too was angry when I discovered a crime against an innocent child taking place within our home and can not blame you for wishing the one responsible to pay. A cursory inspection, after I first recovered your daughter, turned up no obvious injuries aside from a few bumps and bruises but I would advise you to have a medic scan her for internal injuries and drugs since she was unconscious when I first recovered her from her would-be-kidnapper."

"Arigatou, ANBU-san; I will see to it that she is examined immediately," Hiashi murmured as he stepped forward to collect his daughter. "The Hyuuga are in your debt for your quick intervention."

"There is no debt between us, Hyuuga-sama; it is my duty and my honor to protect all of Konoha's children for they are all precious."

"Those are wise words from one so young," Hizashi stated as the trees finally released him now that Hiashi's anger had been diffused.

"Not so much wisdom as experience, Hyuuga-san; I know what it feels like to be ripped away from my family and I have no wish to see another child endure the pain and grief of being torn away from his or her family," Kojimaru corrected as he gently untangled the now sleeping toddler from his neck and shirt so he could pass her to her father.

Before either man could respond to Kojimaru's small confession, Inu and Tenzou appeared beside him in twin bursts of smoke. A second ANBU squad appeared just behind the two Hyuuga a moment later. Kojimaru nodded to the two clansmen before he turned his attention to his captain as the man spoke up after a brief inspection of the immediate area.

"Tora, report!" Inu ordered curtly.

"After sending my clones to notify both you and the Hokage of the attack in progress, I set up surveillance within the blanket genjutsu that had been cast over the entirety of the Hyuuga Estate in an attempt to determine how many enemies were involved in the attack while I waited for your arrival. It was only a few minutes after that when my attention was drawn to movement within the estate as a man moved across the grounds carrying a bound and gagged child. Fearing for the child's safety, I quickly set up an ambush on the man's projected path and kept an eye out for any additional enemies while I waited for him to reach my trap."

"The moment he reached the top of the wall, I used the trees to capture the suspect and rescue the child from his grasp before I slapped a chakra suppression tag on him. I retrieved and freed the child at that point and discovered the one I had rescued was the Clan Head's daughter and quickly checked to make certain that she had not been seriously harmed by her kidnapper. During that time, the genjutsu over the estate faltered and failed. The Hyuuga raised the alarm just a few minutes later and both the Clan Head and his brother hurried out to confront his daughter's kidnapper. I intervened to prevent them from the killing the captive in their justifiable anger and returned the Hyuuga heiress to them."

"That was the point at which you arrived, teichou," Kojimaru succinctly finished.

"Were you injured?"

"No."

"Where is the captive now?"

"Above you, Inu-teichou," Kojimaru replied as he pointed to the branches of the tree directly behind them as the tree branches withdrew the prisoner from the trunk of the tree where Kojimaru had stashed him in order to protect him.

"Good job, Tora; I want you and Kuma to deliver him directly to Ibiki for questioning. The two of you are to stay with the prisoner at all times until Kasai or I personally relieve you of your duty. I've already sent a Kage Bunshin on ahead to warn Ibiki of potential prisoners; so he will know to expect you."

"Wakatta, teichou," Kojimaru acknowledged as the trees deposited the prisoner at his feet all trussed up in hardened branches.

Kojimaru then turned away from Inu and began walking towards the nearest tree as the branches securing their prisoner grew feet-like roots and began scuttling along in his wake while Tenzou fell into step behind the mobile prison. All three of them would melt into the tree a heartbeat later before shifting from the tree to the earth below in order to avoid being caught by any accomplices above ground. It was a method of prisoner transport that Tenzou and Kojimaru had perfected years earlier at the urging of Ibiki shortly after Team Fourteen had been designated as Team Kage and assigned to work with the T and I Department.

It took them less than ten minutes to traverse the distance between the Hyuuga Estate and the T and I Facility where they moved back up into a single tree that conveniently sat directly beside the building's entrance. It was a tree that the two of them had had a hand in growing there four years earlier for the sole purpose of giving them an exit point close to their destination. Kojimaru stepped out of the trunk first and scanned the immediate area for hostiles before he knocked on the tree to let Tenzou know it was safe to move the prisoner.

The walking cage separated from the tree next and Kojimaru entered the building and held the door open for their prisoner. Tenzou slipped through the doors on the heels of the prisoner and Kojimaru scanned the street one last time before he closed the door and moved back up beside the man he'd captured. Ibiki and Aoba were waiting for them inside of the lobby alongside of Inu's Kage Bunshin.

"This idiot was caught red handed in an attempt to kidnap Hyuuga Hinata; the three year old daughter and heiress of Hyuuga Hiashi – the current Head of the Hyuuga Clan," Kojimaru reported as the living prison shifted the prisoner into an upright position. "We've been ordered to remain at the prisoner's side until our captain or our commander personally gives us permission to leave his side; we will do our best not to get in your way as you question the prisoner."

"This way, gentlemen; we have a chamber already prepared," Ibiki instructed as he turned to lead the way deeper into the building while Aoba fell into step beside the masked Tenzou in order to provide an extra layer of security for their prisoner. Inu's clone would join the small procession as well.

Kojimaru wasn't the only one to utter a number of curses the moment the identity of the kidnapper was revealed to be the Lead Jounin of the Kumogakure delegation that had just signed a new treaty with Konoha on behalf of his village. Inu's Kage Bunshin immediately dispelled itself to pass on that information to Inu while Tenzou formed a Moku Bunshin that he sent to warn Kasai and Ibiki sent a Chuunin to notify the Hokage. The political ramifications of the attack on the Hyuuga Clan by a member of the Kumo delegation (the leader of the delegation, no less) were worrisome.

Kojimaru's greatest fear was that this would mean that they would end up in another war so soon after the last one and practically on the heels of the Kyuubi's attack. It made him sick to his stomach just thinking about the possibility of war breaking out between their two villages. He never wanted to fight in another war.

The Sandaime Hokage arrived a half an hour later with Kasai, Shikaku, Inoichi, Chouza, and Inu. As he strode into the room, the Hokage ordered, "Inu, take your squad and secure this room. No one is to disturb us for any reason. If any one, and I do mean _any _one, attempts to force their way into this room you are to take them into custody and hold them for questioning. I will not tolerate any interference in this matter when a single mistake could see us in yet another war."

"Wakarimasu, Hokage-sama," Inu replied as he signaled to Kojimaru and Tenzou to exit the room ahead of him. Once they were outside, he ordered, "Kuma, I want you to merge with the building and monitor the interrogation room to insure that no one attempts to spy upon the interrogation and to keep anyone from sneaking into the room through means other than the door. Tora, I want you to seed the hall with your splinters before you merge with the door; your job will be to capture anyone that attempts to barge passed me as I stand guard over the door."

Both younger teens acknowledged their orders and Tenzou quickly sank into the floor while Kojimaru dug out the half finished splinter bomb he'd been building (it still took him two months to make one device) and scattered the barely visible splinters through the hall in both directions. He also scattered a handful of tiny leaves that were no larger than the fingernail of his pinky finger so that there would be plenty of growing material on hand if he needed to grow an army of clones to help him subdue any troublemakers that turned up. He then leaned up against the wooden door and sank into it while Inu took up post directly in front of the door.

And while Kojimaru couldn't see the interior of the entire building like Tenzou could when merged with the door, he could hear what was happening both inside of the room and directly outside of it and he would be able to control his splinters without needing to see them. Once he was completely submersed in the wood, Kojimaru tuned out the sounds of the interrogation taking place and focused all of his attention on the hallway outside of the room. He also sent a thin thread of his unique chakra out towards Tenzou so his brother could easily garner his attention by tugging on that thread if he needed backup.

During the three hours that their squad stood guard over the room, they would catch no less than seven individuals attempting to sneak or force their way passed their squad. One was a traitor from the Hyuuga Clan's branch family, two were masked individuals that at first glance appeared to be members of the ANBU Corps but were actually not, two were Kumo spies and members of the Kumo delegation that was in the village, and the last two were Orochimaru's spies that had infiltrated the village years earlier.

All seven of the prisoners were conveniently secured within the walls of the building to prevent them from disappearing while their attention was elsewhere. It also kept them isolated from one another so that none of the prisoners actually knew who else had been captured and made it so they could not plot together to either come up with a story for their being there or plan an escape. On top of that, it protected them from a cohort that might attempt to silence them in order to prevent them from spilling their secrets.

At the end of those three hours (during which the would-be-kidnapper was being interrogated), Ibiki and Kasai stepped out of the room to start issuing orders to round up the names of the man's accomplices (the entire delegation and a number of spies living within the village). Inu would take Kojimaru and two full squads of ANBU guards to take those on the list into custody while Tenzou would be left to stand watch over their earlier prisoners alongside yet another squad of ANBU so that he could pull each prisoner from the wall as Ibiki and Inoichi questioned them one at a time.

Not all of those they had been ordered to arrest chose to come peaceably and the ten ANBU tasked with the arrests ended up in more than one fight over the course of the ten hours it would take to capture all of their targets. Kojimaru would feel those ten hours the most as he used his Kekkei Genkai again and again to capture their targets, to fight those who resisted, and to defend his fellow ANBU. It would also mark the first time that Kojimaru fought alongside the otters in a real fight (that didn't involve hunting sharks and gators) after he summoned half a dozen of the warriors he'd been training alongside of for the past five months.

By the time they captured their final target, Kojimaru was being supported by a worried Kawanari because he didn't have the strength to stand alone. He was also still bleeding from a multitude of injuries that hadn't been healed by his natural healing ability due to how far he'd drained his chakra reserves. It didn't help that he was having trouble breathing due to several bruised and cracked ribs he'd gotten when they'd gone to arrest the Hyuuga Elder that had been named by the kidnapper as being the one to hire Kumo to kidnap Hinata in an attempt to take control of the clan from Hiashi.

His captain was in a very similar state; the silver haired cyclops had exhausted himself after he'd revealed a hidden Sharingan beneath the normally empty hole of his mask's left eye. That had been a rather shocking revelation for the fifteen year old as it told him exactly who his new teichou was. There was no time to confirm that knowledge during their mission though and once the mission was over, Kojimaru couldn't even rub two thoughts together long enough to spark a creative insult for Kawanari when the annoying but deadly otter called him Same no Kouji in front of Kasai, Inu, Ibiki, Inoichi, and the Hokage. That was on top of calling him koneko more than once.

To add insult to injury (both figurative and literal), Kasai had him checked into the ANBU Infirmary despite his protests due to the fact that his body was no longer healing any of his injuries. Of course, it didn't help that he was having trouble stringing together complete sentences on top of needing help to stay on his feet. Kawanari would end his feeble protests with a not so gentle tap to the back of his head. Kojimaru swore he'd shave the otter bald at the first opportunity when he woke up in the ANBU Infirmary some forty-eight hours later.

At least he had company in the form of both his unconscious captain and a rather groggy and still exhausted Tenzou. The only reason that Kojimaru was even awake at that point was because his reserves recovered at a rate that was three or four times faster than anyone outside of a Jinchuuriki or someone taking chemical stimulants. That was yet another aspect of his healing ability that Tenzou had regretfully not gained from the experiments that gave him a weaker version of Kojimaru's internal healing ability.

The evil ANBU medics would keep Kojimaru for another two days after he woke up. The only reason Kojimaru didn't just sink into the floor and disappear was because Kisuke (Tenzou's adoptive uncle and ANBU Kirin-teichou) brought him real tea twice each day. It also helped that he had company in the form of his brother during that time. Inu was there as well but the man (who he was pretty certain was Hatake Kakashi) was dead to the world due to how badly he had overused his implanted Sharingan during the ten hours they'd spent running all over the village capturing spies and traitors.

With his entire squad either in the Infirmary (Tenzou wouldn't be released until three days after Kojimaru) or on medical leave, Kojimaru didn't really have anything to occupy himself with other than training. So he spent his time bouncing between the ANBU Infirmary (to keep his brother company until he was released), home (to catch up on the chores he'd been unable to take care of while he was disposed), and the private training rooms in the ANBU Facility. He spent the most time locked up in a training room working to increase his chakra reserves and improve his chakra control since he didn't have anyone to spar with at the time.

He could have summoned the otters to train with him but he was still annoyed at Kawanari for blabbing that nickname out in front of so many high level shinobi that had no compunction against teasing him mercilessly about the name on top of demanding the know the story behind the name. So, he had no plans to summon any of the otters until he had finished planning his retaliation prank. He also didn't feel like pushing his body to its limits with kenjutsu practice so soon after he'd gotten out of the Infirmary because he knew he'd never hear the end of it from the ANBU medics if they found out.

And they would find out.

They were creepy that way.

So Kojimaru stuck to the advanced chakra control exercises that he'd been taught and spent hours meditating in order to direct his chakra internally so that he could stretch his coils to increase his reserves. Tenzou would join him once he was released (the taller teen had suffered from a severe case of chakra exhaustion that, while not as serious as Kojimaru's or their captain's had been, had taken longer to recoup from because it took far more time for his body to refill his chakra reserves). The only break they would take during that time was on the day that Tenzou was released so that they could celebrate Tenzou's fifteenth birthday (three days late).

The moment that he was released from the Infirmary a week after Tenzou, their captain hunted the two of them down just as they finished their training for the day. The man eyed them critically with his single eye from behind his mask for a long minute before he looked right at Kojimaru and stated, "We need to talk."

"Does it have to be right now…? We had plans for this evening," Kojimaru replied with a touch of exasperation; he had an appointment with a pot of freshly brewed tea and a homemade batch of vanilla and pecan wagashi.

"Your plans and your talk are both going to have to wait," Kasai interjected as he walked up behind the trio. "The three of you have ten minutes in which to prepare for a two month long mission to Kumo before you meet me in my office. I've already sent for Taka and the second squad that you will be supporting on your mission."

"Kuso," Kojimaru cursed with a scowl as Kasai burst into a cloud of smoke; identifying itself as a Kage Bunshin and not the real Kasai. "Chikushou."

"Suck it up, Same no Kouji; you heard the boss. Go pack," Inu instructed as he began walking away.

"There will be splinters. Lots and lots of painfully sharp splinters of the densest wood I can grow and I will stick them in highly uncomfortable and unmentionable places the moment our mission is over. Frequently and repeatedly," Kojimaru swore as he and Tenzou took off towards their rooms at a steady lope so that they could grab their gear.

Inu's laughter chased the pair down the hallway for a full minute before the sound got lost in the endless maze of hallways. Kojimaru kept muttering dire threats under his breath right up until he and Tenzou entered their assigned rooms. He then tucked away all playfulness and minor annoyances as he quickly gathered his gear from his locker and sent off a single Moku Bunshin to let his godfather know that he would be gone for at least two months and to play decoy for the time that he was gone so that his ANBU persona would not be linked to his everyday identity.

* * *

**Translations:** Japanese to English

Arigatou – thank you  
Chikushou – damn  
Inu – dog  
Kage Bunshin – shadow clone  
Kawanari – one-eyed otter; kawauso (river otter) + kaminari (thunder)  
Kirin – giraffe  
Koneko – kitten  
Kuma – bear  
Kuso – swear word  
Maa, maa – now, now, there, there, or calm down (a phrase used to placate someone)  
Moku Bunshin – wood clone  
Same no Kouji – Shark Bait (Kojimaru's nickname)  
Teichou – captain  
Tora – tiger  
Wakarimasu – I understand (formal – present tense)  
Wakatta – I understand/understood

* * *

**11-15-15:** _Minor edits made to chapter to fix spelling/grammar mistakes and removed unnecessary author's notes._


	21. The Reply

**Disclaimer:** _All HP characters are the property of JKR, the WB, and respective publishing companies and all Naruto characters are the property of Masashi Kishimoto. This is nothing more than a simple FanFiction that I have written. I have made no money from this or any of the other stories I have posted on this or other sites._

**Warnings:** _Mild to moderate violence, character death, alternate universe (i.e. kiss canon goodbye), OCC behaviors and personalities, a number of original characters and obscure canon characters to flesh out family trees, random chosen last names to give a number of characters surnames, and who knows what else._

**AN:** _This story is self-beta'd; so there may be occasional grammatical or spelling errors that crop up every now and then and for those I apologize in advance._

* * *

Chapter Twenty-One: The Reply

_August 30, 0294 AtD, 3:21 PM  
Konohagakure no Sato, Hi no Kuni_

It only took the three members of Inu's squad still in the ANBU Facility nine minutes to grab their gear and make their way to Kasai's office. Kojimaru and Tenzou would arrive first in twin swirls of smoke with Inu turning up right on their heels just seconds later. The squad that would be taking the mission with them turned up next and Kojimaru felt a bit better about going on an extended mission when he saw that the captain of the second squad was Kisuke. The green eyed teen felt Tenzou relax beside him the moment he too saw that his uncle would be going with them.

Taka, the final member of Inu's squad, would show up two minutes after Kisuke's squad; the only member present who had not been within the building when they had been summoned. The moment that Taka stepped inside of the room, Kasai raised a privacy barrier around the room in order to prevent anyone outside of the office from overhearing the mission details.

"The eight of you have been selected to deliver Konoha's reply to Kumogakure no Sato," Kasai began as he briefly met each of their gazes. "I won't lie; there is a high probability that I am sending you into a hostile situation and that one or more of you might die when you are forced to fight your way clear if things go pear shaped. We are fairly certain that the hot-tempered Yondaime Raikage will be greatly displeased with our response to his sanctioning an attack on one of Konoha's clans."

"Sugoi," Kojimaru muttered sarcastically under his breath as he tried to ignore the way his heart twinged in regret and fear over the knowledge that another war just might be inevitable.

"What kind of a reply will we be taking to the Raikage?" Inu asked after he shot a brief glance in Kojimaru's direction; that brief look telling the green-eyed teen that at least one person other than Tenzou had heard his mutter.

"The body of the man that attempted to kidnap the Hyuuga Heiress, the shredded remains of the false treaty that had been formed and signed with deception, a letter and a new treaty from the Hokage, and a declaration of war in the event that the Raikage refuses to sign the new treaty."

"Chikushou, I knew I should have made out a will after the first training session Inu-teichou put us through," Kojimaru groused as he folded his arms across his chest.

"Maa, maa, don't worry so much, Shark Bait; I'll protect you and your teammates with my life," Inu promised as he reached over to pat Kojimaru on the head only to miss when Kojimaru sidestepped to escape the touch.

"Kasai-sama, I would like to put in a request for a week's vacation time in two months. I just discovered that I will have a pressing appointment in Kaze no Kuni to collect a couple thousand of my favorite little friends upon our return."

"I am not giving you time off to gather another colony of fire ants," Kasai growled back in exasperation. "The ones you imported last time were hard enough to eradicate before they could firmly entrench themselves." He then picked up a sealed satchel off of his desk and tossed it to Kisuke as he grew serious once more. "Kirin-teichou, you will be in charge of the mission with Inu's squad providing support. The satchel I just gave you holds the storage scroll that contains the preserved body of the delegation leader and all of the documents you are to deliver to the Raikage bar the Declaration of War."

Kasai then lifted a red and black scroll from out of his desk drawer and tossed it over to Kisuke next as he added, "That scroll contains the Declaration of War and you are to guard it with your life until you either bring it back to Konoha so that the Hokage can destroy it or you are forced to hand it over to the Raikage if he refuses to sign the new treaty. I expect that the man will actually attempt to drag out the matter for as long as possible before he actually makes a decision in the hopes that he can turn things back in Kumo's favor."

"If, after six weeks, he is still stalling, you are to give him an ultimatum – the treaty or war. At that point, you are to give him twenty-four hours to decide before you give him the declaration and get the hell out of Kumo. If he attempts to hold any of you hostage or if he gives the order for you to be executed, you have permission to cut the mission short and get out. In the event you are forced to flee Kumo, you are to leave the Declaration of War behind and go to ground to throw off any pursuit until it is safe for you to return to Konoha."

"Understood, Kasai-sama," Kisuke replied as he tucked the scroll away on his person and tucked the satchel under his arm.

"Do any of you have any questions regarding your mission?"

"Has word been sent ahead to the Raikage to expect our arrival?" Kisuke inquired after a brief moment of consideration.

"Yes, we sent word that we were escorting the delegation's leader home along with a copy of the new treaty. And no, we did not give them advanced word that their plot to kidnap the Hyuuga Heiress had failed or that the man who attempted to kidnap her was executed per the terms of the false treaty. The rest of the delegation will be held until we know how the Raikage is going to respond."

"Last question, do any of the terms of the new treaty involve handing over any member of our party in an effort to placate the Raikage? I find it highly coincidental that the squad involved in preventing the planned kidnapping and in rounding up the traitors and spies within the village is being sent to deliver the reply to the Raikage."

Kojimaru couldn't quite stop the involuntary flinch that question drew from him as he immediately understood the implications of Kisuke's words. He would flinch a second time when Tenzou reached out to snag his wrist; the contact unexpected if not unwanted. Part of him was utterly horrified at the mere possibility that he or his brother might be nothing more than a sacrificial lamb being sent to the slaughter in order to stop the brewing war. The only thing that stopped him from snarling in rage over the implied threat to his brother was the near painful grip Tenzou had on his left wrist.

"No, we are not going to make any attempts to placate the Raikage," Kasai refuted without any hesitation and both fifteen year olds relaxed; they trusted Kasai not to lie to them. "The reason that your two squads were selected to take this mission was based upon your skill sets and previous mission records. It is also my hope that the luck that tends to follow Tora and Kuma around will increase the chances that all eight of you will return home safe and sound."

"Good; I would have hated to be branded a traitor when I inevitably refused to sacrifice a fellow Konoha shinobi."

"You would not have been alone," Kasai snorted as he briefly flicked his eyes in Kojimaru and Tenzou's direction. "Did you have any other questions?"

"No."

"Good, then you are dismissed. Good luck, gentlemen."

The moment they stepped outside of the room, Kisuke led them towards the supply room where he grabbed eight of the blank, featureless masks that were typically used by those that were only loosely associated with the Corps in order to hide their identity when the need arose. They were the same masks that Kojimaru and Tenzou had donned countless times starting with the joint Iwa and Kumo siege back at the end of the Third Great Shinobi War. Kisuke sealed the masks into a storage scroll that was tucked into his utility pouch as he signaled for the group to follow him once more.

Ten minutes later, they silently slipped out of the village using one of several hidden gates that were known and accessible only to those within the ANBU Corps. The eight of them immediately took to the trees and headed north the moment they passed through the defensive barrier that surrounded the village. They would put a good thirty miles behind them before Kisuke ordered them down out of the trees.

As soon as they touched down, Kisuke he tossed the satchel containing the scrolls they were delivering to Kumo over to Kojimaru as he ordered, "Tora, you will be responsible for protecting and transporting the Raikage's package until we reach our destination. Kuma, your job is to watch Tora's back and keep trouble from reaching him if at all possible" He then dug the extra masks back out and passed one to each member of the group. "You will need to put those on and cover your hair completely as from this point forward, we will be both nameless and faceless. That means no codenames and no nicknames; not even in sign. It also means that you are not to call on your summonses."

Kojimaru slipped the strap of the satchel over his head and left shoulder before he dug out the black hood that was part of the standard ANBU uniform. He then turned his back to the others as he pulled off his white and orange tiger mask so he could pull up the cloth face mask that he usually kept neatly tucked into the neck of his shirt and pull the hood on over his hair. He then stuck the blank mask to his face with a small thread of chakra before he sealed his ANBU mask into the storage seal that had been sewn onto the inside flap of his utility pouch for the sole purpose of storing his mask when he wasn't wearing it.

That done, he turned back around to find that everyone else had also switched out their masks and covered their hair. Kisuke inspected each of them briefly before he gave them the order to move out once more. As the most inexperienced members in the group (and the youngest) Kojimaru and Tenzou quickly found themselves maneuvered into the middle of the formation as Inu moved up to take point while Taka dropped to take the rear; leaving the members of Kisuke's squad to split up and take the sides. Most rookies might have complained over being treated in such a way but both boys were far too used to ending up in such a position to take offense.

It would take the eight of them five days to reach Kumogakure as they had chosen to cut through Yu no Kuni and Shimo no Kuni rather than attempt to shave time off of their journey by cutting across the sea. They had also been forced to cut their speed the moment they passed into Kaminari no Kuni in order to watch for potential ambushes.

From the moment they crossed into Kaminari no Kuni, Kojimaru felt on edge with his anxiety tripling as soon as they entered the barren mountains that surrounded Kumo. It wasn't worry over the mission that was unsettling him though; it was the near complete absence of vegetation. Even the vast desert that was Kaze no Kuni had quite a bit of plant life scattered throughout the sand dunes that spanned nearly the entire country. The lack of any plant life bar a few scraggly weeds made him feel disconnected from the world and it took all of his self control not to seed the mountains with trees as they made their way to the hidden village tucked into the dead mountains.

On the evening before they expected to reach their destination, Kisuke had Kojimaru and Tenzou prepare a hidden base camp where the group could rendezvous in the event that they had to flee the village in a hurry. The camp had been carved right out of the rocky cliffs of the mountains that surrounded Kumo and protected with a barrier courtesy of Inu. That night, the eight of them would sit down and go over their plans once last time before they entered Kumo. When they left the base around midnight, a pair of Moku Bunshin (one each from Kojimaru and Tenzou) would be left behind to guard the camp from discovery by any Kumo patrols that moved through the area.

The instant they presented themselves to the guards at the village's entrance the next day, Kojimaru locked away his personal discomfort to focus on their mission as he kept one hand securely on the strap of the satchel he still carried. The guards took their time checking their group in before they assigned a pair of Chuunin to lead them to the Foreign Quarters where all visitors to the village were housed in shinobi run hotels where they would be closely watched while word was sent to the Raikage of their arrival.

As they were led through the maze of towering cliffs and buildings, Kojimaru discreetly scattered several of his Mokuton splinters along the streets while Tenzou occasionally dropped one of his tracking seeds so they would be able to find their way out without a guide and make it easier to fight their way out, if they had to. At the same time, he let his eyes dart about in order to take in the faces and clothes of the people that they passed on the street. In no time at all, they were shown into the lobby of an elegant hotel that had been built into one of the cliffs where they were assigned a single suite of rooms that they would occupy for the duration of their stay in Kumo.

The moment that they were left alone, Kisuke gave the signal to start putting their plans into motion.

Kojimaru silently passed the satchel holding the Raikage's package over to Kisuke before he pulled a storage scroll out of his utility pouch and released the Doton Bunshin he'd stored in the seal the previous night. Beside him, Tenzou, Inu, and Taka were also releasing Doton Bunshin from storage scrolls. As soon as all four clones had been released, Kojimaru took hold of Inu's arm while Tenzou grabbed Taka and the four of them merged into the wood paneling that covered all of the floors in the hotel – leaving the clones behind to take their place so their absence would not be noticed.

Tenzou then led their brief jaunt through the floors as the younger teen used his connection to the wood to lead them to an empty room on the opposite side of the hotel from the room they'd been given. The two teens pulled their teammates free of the wood a moment later and silently offered the pair a bottle of mint water; it was always disorienting and disconcerting for those without the Mokuton to travel through the wood and the first time was always the worst. It would take the two older men a full five minutes to recover from the shock of being merged with the floor (their bodies had briefly been one with the floor rather than just passing through it).

"Proceed with the plan," Inu instructed as he turned to face Kojimaru once the disorientation had passed.

Kojimaru nodded and pulled out a leaf from his pouch (the teen always carried a handful with him whenever he went on a mission) as he moved closer to Tenzou. Once beside his brother, Kojimaru pressed the leaf to the blank mask covering his brother's face and closed his eyes as he brought his free hand up to form half the ram seal. He briefly concentrated on the faces and clothing that he'd studied while traveling through the village and fixed a single image in his mind before he uttered a soft but firm, "Mokuton: Kamen no Jutsu."

Once the jutsu was activated with a minute pulse of chakra, the leaf under Kojimaru's hand grew larger and molded itself to Tenzou's body from head to foot. The moment it had completely encased his brother, the leaf appeared to crack and crumble before it turned to smoke and revealed the newly disguised Tenzou. Instead of a mask wearing teen, there was now a blond haired, gray-eyed teen with mocha colored skin wearing the typical clothes worn by Kumo civilians. Inu let out a soft whistle of appreciation as he got up and circled Tenzou while poking and prodding the disguise.

"Remarkable, it's completely seamless. How long will the disguise hold?"

"It will stay until I release it or until it takes about forty-five percent damage; which is how much damage it takes to compromise the integrity of the jutsu," Kojimaru replied as he pulled out another leaf and approached Taka to do his disguise next; transforming the older man into a merchant from Iwa.

"Can it be dispelled like a normal henge?"

"No; the normal henge can be dispelled by disrupting the person's chakra in order to make the illusion waver and fall but because the chakra in the Kamen no Jutsu is self contained, there is no way to disrupt it bar damaging the thin layer of material that covers the entire body. Are you ready for me to do yours now?"

"Hai."

If Inu had seen the smirk that crossed Kojimaru's face in that moment, he might have had second thoughts about allowing the younger teen to create his disguise. As it was, the blank mask that Kojimaru was wearing hid the evil smirk that the green eyed teen was wearing and as a result, Inu was soon wearing the visage of a female merchant from Iwa; complete with boobs. The disguised Jounin didn't catch on to the unwanted additions to his disguise until Taka couldn't hold back his laughter any longer.

"This is not going to work," Inu deadpanned as he reached down to grab the offending appendages (thinking they were just illusionary), only to be shocked when they felt as solid as the rest of his body. "Get them off."

"Sorry, no can do. Once a disguise has been set I can't alter it," Kojimaru half lied; he could change it but it would actually require him to cancel the jutsu and create a new disguise and he wasn't going to waste the chakra. "It would also just be a waste of chakra for me to remove the jutsu just to replace it a second later and I still have to create my own disguise."

"You did this on purpose."

"Yep, sure did. Besides, you and I both know that the other merchants are far more likely to trust a loving couple than they would a couple of unfamiliar men."

Inu growled and crossed his arms over his chest, only to quickly drop his arms when his new assets got in the way. A snicker escaped Kojimaru as he used the jutsu on himself; which caused a mass of leaves to sprout from the top of his head before they poured down over his body like molasses, changing his form as they went. When it was finished, he looked exactly like Tenzou with the exception of his eyes; which were still green. For some reason, Kojimaru could never change the color of his eyes using any technique.

In fact, the only way that he could change the color of his eyes was through the use of seals (like the ones that Akimichi Torifu had designed for him eleven years earlier). Otherwise, the chakra just slid right off of his eyes in the same way that a genjutsu slid off of him. Those who knew about the phenomenon figured that it was just another facet of his only inborn and unnamed Kekkei Genkai that gave him his accelerated healing rate. Either way, it didn't really bother Kojimaru all that much but it was a huge pain when it came to disguises because his eyes were his most memorable feature. A pair of tinted goggles easily solved that issue now.

"I notice you didn't give you or your twin boobs," Inu pointed out in an aggravated tone.

"Well, yeah; it would not be safe for girls of our age to run around without a proper chaperon and my brother and I will be the ones that are out wandering the streets while the two of you sit in the hotel's lounge and get cozy with the other visiting merchants."

"What a troublesome little gaki you are turning out to be."

"Thank you for the compliment, obachan."

Inu growled but ignored the playful retort in favor of focusing on their mission once more, "Do the two of you know what to do?"

"Hai."

"Good. We'll meet you back here in this room in exactly one week unless this room is occupied by then and in that case we'll be in one of the neighboring rooms. Keep your eyes and ears open and don't take any fool risks. If anything goes wrong, get out and wait for us at the base camp as planned."

"Wakatta," both fifteen year olds replied in unison before they sank back into the floor so they could make their way out of the hotel without being noticed by any of the shinobi standing guard.

It would take them about ten minutes to navigate through the building before they found a point at which they could transition from the wood floors to the dirt and stone of the cliff that surrounded the back half of the hotel (most buildings within Kumo had been partially carved out of the mountain due to the limited building space available). After that, it was only another two minutes before they were once again standing out in the open. They took a moment to catch their bearings in the unfamiliar village (this being their first time in Kumogakure) before they followed their trail of splinters and seeds until they reached the end of the Foreign Quarter.

At that point they split off from their hidden trail in order to explore the village. This time they didn't bother to set down more splinters or seeds; leaving their original trail as a beacon and guide so that they wouldn't get themselves lost by laying down a confusing number of crisscrossing trails through the maze of canyons and streets. They wandered for several hours before they stumbled upon an open air market and the two of them gladly dug out some of the money they always carried on them to purchase a couple of pork buns and fried squid from a couple of street vendors.

They would spend the rest of the day in the market, listening to the rampant gossip that was being bandied back and forth between the buyers and sellers. A few of the vendors would shoo them off if they hung about for too long, the men and women leery of potential theft, but they never went very far and they took care not to appear too suspicious. It helped that they occasionally purchased snacks or treats from the scattered stalls; something that actually eased the minds of the vendors (since they turned out to be paying customers) and made it easier for them to ignore the two boys.

Sunset would signal the end of the day and by the time the last of the sun's light disappeared behind the mountains, the market had shut down and the square was soon emptied of all life bar the two undercover shinobi after the crowds gone home or ventured into one of the other districts in search of food or entertainment. By silent agreement, the two of them slipped away into the night in search of an out of the way place to spend the night.

They ended up in a little used alley between two apartment buildings that had been built fairly close together on the same stretch of rocks. To avoid trouble seeking them during the night, they merged themselves into the cliff wall at the back of the alley and made a small pocket cave deep within the rock and dirt where they could sleep undisturbed without fear of discovery. The newly made cave would also double as a bolt hole in the event that things went to hell in a hand basket at some point during the negotiations. Two other such caves would be set up in different parts of the village for much of the same reason and the two of them would never use the same hide out two nights in a row to avoid getting noticed.

Kojimaru would be the first to wake in the morning and the first thing he did was make a pot of tea and breakfast while he waited for Tenzou to wake up. When the tea was finished, he took his time to savor his first cup of tea since the morning of the twentieth, when Kasai had called them in to give them their mission. As much as he hated going without his tea, he knew better than to waste time on trivialities while on a mission; and as blasphemous as he thought it was to refer to tea as trivial, he knew that it was when it came to missions.

That's not to say he never drank tea while on missions; he did, when the missions allowed for him to indulge. Their current mission was not one of those missions where it was safe to indulge in his favorite past time though. It was also not the place to openly advertise the one habit that could identify him to anyone that paid attention to him and was familiar with his habits outside of the mask. The only reason he was risking it that morning was because he knew there was no one there to see him aside from his brother and he needed to settle his nerves.

"That smells heavenly," Tenzou stated as he crawled out of his sleeping bag.

"That is because tea is the drink of the gods."

"I was referring to the food," Tenzou teasingly retorted with a smirk.

"Heathen," Kojimaru playfully spat back as he passed his brother a plate and a cup of tea.

"Whatever, at least I'm not the one that's looking to be killed once we get home. I still can't believe that you turned our teichou into a woman."

"I owed him a prank and while I don't normally play pranks on a mission, the opportunity was just too good to pass up and you know it will be an effective disguise."

"True, which is probably the only reason why he didn't make a bigger fuss or kill you right there."

Kojimaru snickered even as he nodded in agreement. He then took another sip of his tea before he asked, "So, shall we go back to the market again today or should we snoop around a bit and see if we can't find any kids to blend in and make friends with?"

"We should try and make some friends so we don't stand out as much. Have you given any thought to what we can use as a back story?"

"Hmm, how about a pair of brothers from a small farm that were sent to Kumo to purchase supplies. This is, of course, our first time in the village as we are finally old enough to be trusted on our own. We'll be in town for a week so that we can rest and get a good look around before we have to make our purchases and leave. That would give us a reason to be hanging about in the market and why we feel a need to explore the village."

"That works for me; why didn't our father come with us though?"

"Well, he could either be elderly or he could really busy with the harvest due to the time of year, I suppose."

"What if we change the story a bit instead? We can still be farm boys but we were sent to the village in order to get medicine for our father while our mother stayed behind to nurse our father through his illness."

"Shouldn't we be in a hurry to get back home then?"

"Chikushou, didn't think about that. Elderly father it is then. Why are we being allowed so much time away from home during the harvest though?"

"Because we were constantly getting underfoot and our older brothers wanted to get us out of the way while they helped father to harvest the crops," Kojimaru offered after a moment.

"That might work. Where is our mother?"

"Died in childbirth the day we were born due to her advanced age and the fact that she was carrying both of us. What should we use for names?"

"Yonmaru and Gomaru; our brother's names are Ichimaru, Nimaru, and Sanmaru – our parents were very unimaginative when it came to naming us. You should be the older twin; since it will be easier for us to remember since you are just barely older than me anyway."

"That should work. What kind of supplies are we looking to purchase? Clothes? Tools? Food stuffs that are unavailable on the farm?"

"A couple bolts of heavy duty fabric, buttons, and sturdy shoes several sizes larger than ours. We should also pick up sugar, a large bag of rice, a half pound of tobacco, and an imported tea," Tenzou suggested after he finished the last of his breakfast. "Each one of those items would be rather difficult to get on a real farm since there are no rice fields here in Kaminari no Kuni; especially in the mountains surrounding Kumo. What kind of farm will our father own?"

"Red Bean farm or we could go the other way and have a sheep or goat farm."

"Bean Farm; they grow rather well in the mountain regions and we both know more about gardening than we do about raising a flock of sheep or a herd of goats."

"That works for me. Anything else we might have missed?"

"No, I don't think so, Yonmaru."

"Shall we go explore the village some more then, Gomaru?"

"Might as well," Tenzou replied as he helped Kojimaru to clean up the small mess that had been made in their hidden refuge.

The two of them then slipped into the walls of the cliff once more where Tenzou spent several minutes monitoring nearby chakra signatures before he indicated that it was safe for them to step out of the wall. It wasn't long before they were both once more traveling through the village looking for a large group of children to make contact with while appearing to simply be wandering aimlessly.

Meanwhile, Kisuke's team had made first contact with the Raikage and weathered through the initial storm of the Raikage's fury while Inu and Taka collected and traded rumors with the other merchants that were currently residing in another hotel just a few streets away from the one they had been checked into. The four clones that were taking Squad Inu's place calmly lounged about their room and made idle but meaningless conversation to entertain and distract their hidden guards.

* * *

**Translations:** Japanese to English

Doton Bunshin – earth/dirt clone  
Inu – dog  
Kaminari no Kuni – Lightning Country  
Kaze no Kuni – Wind Country  
Kirin – giraffe  
Kuma – bear  
Maa, maa – now, now/there, there or calm down (a phrase used to placate someone)  
Moku Bunshin – wood clone  
Mokuton; Kamen no Jutsu – Wood Disguise Technique (kamen – meaning mask/disguise)  
Same no Kouji – Shark Bait (Kojimaru's nickname)  
Shimo no Kuni – Frost Country  
Sugoi – wonderful/wow/awesome or dreadful/terrible (depending on how it is said)  
Teichou – captain  
Taka – hawk  
Tora – tiger  
Wakatta – I understand  
Yu no Kuni – Hot Springs Country

**Notes: **

Fake names – okay, I was really lazy with the aliases that Kojimaru and Tenzou are using and the ones I chose were not meant to be insulting. Basically, I just took numbers one through five and added maru to them; Ichi-maru (one), Ni-maru (two), San-maru (three), Yon-maru (four), and Go-maru (five). It was also a way for the two of them to make a joke out of the way they had once been called nothing but numbers by Orochimaru in order to make it less painful the next time that they are assigned a number to identify them on a temporary basis (like when they took the ANBU entrance exam).

* * *

**AN:** _You know… I'm beginning to sense a pattern with my treatment of Kakashi in all of the Naruto crossovers that I write. He's exceptionally easy to pick on a tease. And the funny thing is that I really like Kakashi. Though, I am disappointed that he didn't really make an effort to teach Naruto much of anything prior to the time skip. In fact, he was a bit of a prick in the beginning. I much prefer Kakashi's attitude post time skip. ~ Jenn_

**11-15-15:** _Minor edits made to chapter to fix spelling/grammar mistakes and removed unnecessary author's notes._


	22. The Girl

**Disclaimer:** _All HP characters are the property of JKR, the WB, and respective publishing companies and all Naruto characters are the property of Masashi Kishimoto. This is nothing more than a simple FanFiction that I have written. I have made no money from this or any of the other stories I have posted on this or other sites._

**Warnings:** _Mild to moderate violence, character death, alternate universe (i.e. kiss canon goodbye), OCC behaviors and personalities, a number of original characters and obscure canon characters to flesh out family trees, random chosen last names to give a number of characters surnames, and who knows what else._

**AN:** _This story is self-beta'd; so there may be occasional grammatical or spelling errors that crop up every now and then and for those I apologize in advance._

* * *

Chapter Twenty-Two: The Girl

_September 29, 0295 AtD, 6:59 AM  
Kumogakure no Sato, Kaminari no Kuni_

The first rays of sunrise found Kojimaru and Tenzou idly wandering through the confusing maze of streets that made up Kumo with a familiarity born from the long hours they'd spent exploring the village over the past month. Once a week they had snuck back into the hotel that they'd been shown to that first day to meet up with Inu and Taka so they could share information, get an update on the situation with the Raikage, and replace their decoy clones but the rest of the time they had spent memorizing the village's layout and collecting rumors. Over that time, the two of them had worn a dozen different faces and come up with a dozen different background stories as to who they were and why they were there.

Inu had spent most of that time in the disguise of a woman (much to his annoyance) right up until Taka ribbed their captain one too many times and Kojimaru put the older man in a dress just to amuse their captain. Both fifteen year olds had even gone about twice as girls after that; just to prove to Inu that they could carry off the gender switch with much more aplomb than he could and whine about it less. Despite their captain's complaints, he couldn't deny that he'd managed to get far more information by flirting with drunken men than he would have if he'd gone as a man.

Despite the amusement he gained from subtly pranking his teammates each time they met to exchange information, all four of them remained tense and worried. The reason for that was because the Raikage had basically left Kirin's squad cooling their heels as he purposefully put off meeting with them to discuss the new treaty. It also didn't escape their notice that the six week cut off date that Kasai had given them was fast approaching and the threat of war looming over their heads continued to grow in size as the remaining time seemingly slid through their fingers with each breath they took.

Their current goal was to place Kojimaru's chakra splinters and Tenzou's tracking seeds inside of important buildings throughout the village in order to mark those buildings in the event Konoha invaded Kumo in the near future. They also tagged any weak points they found in the village's defenses in order to mark potential points of entry for an invading force. It was a task that both teens found distasteful if only because the idea of fighting another war made their hearts ache at the thought of the pain, anger, and grief that such a war would bring. The only reason they didn't hesitate to carry out that task despite their distaste was because they knew that it would save lives should war be inevitable.

Their target that morning was Kumo's Central Library.

The two of them were just coming up to the street they would need to turn down in order to come up behind the Library when a pained cry followed by the sound of flesh hitting flesh cut through the early morning silence. Kojimaru shared a single look with Tenzou before the two of them moved as one towards darkened alley where the sound had originated from. A single glance into the alley revealed two older men accosting a smaller figure and Kojimaru's temper flared the moment he realized that the smaller figure was a young girl and that the two men were in the process of molesting her; one of them pinning the girl's arms behind her back while the other had a hand up her shirt.

Tenzou silently situated himself in the mouth of the alley in order to keep watch for any shinobi wandering the streets and for any potential accomplice that the two men might have keeping watch for them. Knowing that he was limited in what he could do to deal with the pair (both of his elemental Kekkei Genkai far too distinctive and therefore easily recognized), Kojimaru dashed forward to tackle the man feeling the little girl up instead of ambushing them with his Kekkei Genkai like he usually would.

The fifteen year old plowed his head into the man's side hard enough to make the man crack his head on the wall beside him when he was slammed into it by Kojimaru's momentum. At the same time, the abrupt removal of the man's hand from her clothes tore the girl's shirt. The man holding the girl cursed loudly the moment he had registered the attack and he threw the girl into the wall face first before he made an attempt to help his partner.

After seeing that the first man had fallen unconscious from the unplanned knock on the noggin, Kojimaru spun around to deal with the other pervert in time to block the man's sloppy punch. The teen then retaliated with a sharp palm strike to the man's sternum, a knee to his groin, and a sharp blow to the back of his head. The entire fight took less than two minutes. Still seething in disgust at what the two men had been doing to a _child_, Kojimaru couldn't resist giving them each a good solid kick between the legs that they would undoubtedly be feeling for hours, if not days.

Kojimaru then shoved his anger to the back of his mind as he hurried over to where the girl was huddled up against the wall holding her bloody nose with one hand and trying to keep her ruined shirt together with the other. The sight of her injuries actually had the teen spinning around to plant a foot in the second man's ribs hard enough to crack them but not enough to break them or puncture the lungs. He had to force himself to resist the urge he felt to kill the two men; it would only draw far too much attention to what had happened here and to their presence in the village.

"Are you going to be alright, youjiyo?" Kojimaru asked gently as he slowly approached the girl in order to not frighten her into bolting when she was clearly injured. "Did they hurt you anywhere else? Will you let me take a look at your nose for you to make certain that it isn't broken?"

"Who are you? Why did you stop them? What do you want from me?"

"I'm just a friend who was passing by; I'm not going to hurt you, I promise. I stopped them because what they were doing was wrong; they had no right to touch you like that. And I don't want anything from you; I just want to help you."

"Why…? Why do you care what happens to me?"

Kojimaru sighed at the mistrust he could see in the girl's dark gray eyes and the underlying fear, pain, and loneliness that she hadn't quiet masked. Her eyes spoke of a hard life and part of him wanted to hunt down the ones responsible for hurting her so he could beat the snot out of them. Instead, Kojimaru crouched down just a few feet away from her and dug into his disguised utility pouch for his medical kit.

"I care because it is wrong for any adult to harm a child…"

"I'm not a child! I'm eleven!"

"Are you now?" Kojimaru asked in surprise; he'd actually thought she was closer to eight given the fact that she was so small. "My mistake then, youjiyo. That still doesn't give those two perverts the right to molest you. It is wrong for adults to force themselves on young girls. Or any woman, for that matter."

"I'm not just a little girl! I'm a kunoichi!"

"Are you now?" Kojimaru asked once more, this time with a small trace of amusement. "My apologies, I must have missed your hitai-ate in the commotion."

"I don't have one," the girl replied as her entire face turned beet red all the way to the roots of her light blonde hair. "I'm still in the Academy."

"Ah, that would make you a kunoichi in training then; ne?"

"I guess."

"You don't sound very happy."

"What good is being a kunoichi in training when I couldn't even stop those two from catching me or make them st… stop touching me?" the girl demanded; her voice and breath hitching briefly when she stumbled over the reference to what the two men had been doing to her.

"There will always be others out there that are stronger than you but that doesn't mean that you aren't strong as well. It just means that you have to keep training and keep improving so that you continue to grow stronger," Kojimaru firmly stated in response to her desperate question before he gently moved her hand from her nose and began cleaning the blood from her face.

He had to fight back his anger when he noticed the split lip and livid bruise that marred her face as he immediately realized that one of the men must have slapped her pretty hard earlier and that it was the sound of her being slapped that had caught his and Tenzou's attention. Instead of focusing on the cause of her injuries, Kojimaru focused on easing her pain as he pulled out a small jar of healing cream and gently dabbed it onto her lip before he gently spread it over both the cut and the bruise. He then spread more of the cream on the hand shaped bruises that were still forming on her arms.

Once he was finished treating those bruises, he packed up his medical kit and stood up before he gently helped the girl onto her feet while he discreetly observed her body language to determine if she had any other injuries that needed his attention. Aside from a being a bit stiff and sore, it didn't look like she was injured anywhere else; her clothes were mostly free from blood anyway (bar what blood had gushed from her nose). He then dug into his utility pouch once more to grab the scroll holding the items that he and his brother purchased as part of their disguises in order to collect one of the loose shirts he'd bought just two weeks earlier.

"Here, since it's half my fault that your shirt is ruined, you can have this one to replace it," Kojimaru offered as he held the shirt out to the girl. The girl hesitated for a moment before she accepted the shirt and Kojimaru turned around to offer her a bit of privacy to change into the new shirt while he asked, "Would you like my brother and I to escort you home so you can tell your parents what happened…?"

"No, I'll be fine. I was on my way to the Academy anyway."

Kojimaru waited another minute before he turned around to study the girl for a moment to make certain that she wasn't just saying that to get rid of him before he replied, "Okay, I'm glad that you are feeling better. Try to stay out of dark alleys in the future though, okay? You never know what kind of scum might be lurking in the shadows."

The girl stared intently into his eyes for a full minute before she nodded, turned away from him, and began walking out of the alley. He watched her shy away from Tenzou when she caught sight of him guarding the alley entrance before she darted off in the direction of the Shinobi Academy. Just before she disappeared from view, she cast a single glance back over her shoulder at them. Kojimaru let out a soft chuckle that turned into a growl as he recalled the two unconscious men that were still sprawled behind him.

Needing to get out of there before he did something that would compromise their mission, Kojimaru returned to Tenzou's side at the mouth of the alley. As he stepped up beside his brother, Tenzou reached up and deftly replaced the tinted glasses (different ones than he was wearing before) that Kojimaru had knocked askew when he'd tackled the first man. The green eyed teen briefly winced as he realized that the girl might have seen his eyes clearly before he pushed the matter out of his mind as he tossed the bloody gauze he'd used to clean up the girls face in the trashcan sitting at the front of the alley and lit it on fire to dispose of it completely. The two of them then continued on their way to the library, heading in the opposite direction of the fleeing child.

"She was a cheeky little thing," Tenzou remarked a moment later.

"Hai; even if she was a little skittish. She was kind of cute too."

"Cute…? Since when have you ever thought girls were cute?"

"Since I've finally gotten a chance to see a few girls," Kojimaru dryly retorted with a snort; the teen referring to the fact that they'd had very little time for anything outside of training or missions for the past three years; there was also the fact that they were only just reaching the age where most boys tended to be more interested in girls.

"Point," Tenzou conceded with a sigh.

Kojimaru's little damsel in distress was soon forgotten as the two of them reached the library where they would pretend to hang around waiting for the building to open while they discreetly slipped tracking seeds and chakra splinters beneath the stone tiles that paved the ground in front of the building. As soon as they heard the doors opening, the two of them smiled at the librarian as she let them in and asked her if she could show them where they kept the comic books. The woman left the two of them to their reading as they both tried to read the latest issue of their favorite manga at the same time.

They would kill an hour pouring over the latest exploits of Samurai Sai the Vampire Hunter before they said goodbye to the librarian and headed out the door; pausing just long enough to conceal another splinter and seed beneath a potted plant that sat right beside the front doors when Kojimaru pretended to break a sandal strap. After that, the two of them headed back towards the open air market in order to grab an early lunch. As they ate, the two of them gathered the latest gossip while they killed a few hours until they could head for their next target.

Neither one of them noticed the diminutive blonde that had been following them all morning instead of going to class like she was supposed to; their minds too occupied with their mission and their senses too busy monitoring the shinobi moving through the immediate area to give any thought to the little kunoichi in training that Kojimaru had saved.

* * *

_October 03, 0295 AtD, 8:08 PM  
Kumogakure no Sato, Kaminari no Kuni_

Kakashi was just lifting his nearly empty glass of cheap beer to take a drink while doing his best to ignore the artificial assets clinging to his chest once again when he was hit with the memories of the most recent decoy clone (this one a Kage Bunshin) that he'd left in their group's assigned suite of rooms. He pretended to finish off his beer as the special seal he'd drawn on the featureless mask he wore beneath his disguise for their current mission vanished the alcohol before it touched the lips of his disguise while he quickly processed what he'd just learned. By the time he set his now empty glass down, he was feeling torn between elation and suspicion.

Glancing at his 'husband', Kakashi cleared his throat and simpered, "Darling, I'll be back in just a few minutes; I have to use the little girl's room."

"Of course, dear," Taka indulgently replied. "Did you wish for me to order you another beer?"

"No, but I could use a nice soothing cup of peppermint tea for my queasy stomach," Kakashi replied; his request a code meant to inform Taka that they needed to hunt down the other half of their squad – since both men were fully aware that the hotel never served any tea due to an agreement they had with the tea houses in the Restaurant Quarter.

"I'll take care of it, dear."

Kakashi rose from his chair and gracefully slipped away from the table they were sharing with an old ore trader from Tetsu no Kuni while ignoring the feel of many eyes lingering on his ass as he walked away. He silently swore to never again ogle a woman as she walked away now that he knew how it felt to be ogled in turn. Right on the heels of that oath, he swore to make the little gaki that had temporarily turned him into a woman for the fourth time in the past five weeks pay for the underhanded and repeated prank.

As soon as he reached the women's restroom, Kakashi barricaded himself in one of the stalls and created another Kage Bunshin to replace the one that had dispelled itself. The clone immediately henged into a cricket (since crickets were far less likely to get stepped on if seen than a roach) and slipped out of the bathroom to make its way upstairs. Once that was done, Kakashi emptied his bladder and flushed the toilet before exiting the bathroom. He then made his way back to the table (once again doing his best to ignore the lustful stares glued to his disguise's assets) to retake his seat.

"Dear, I'm afraid the hotel doesn't serve any tea," Taka stated the moment he'd sat down. "Shall I escort you back up to our room or do you wish me to take you to one of the late night tea houses in the Restaurant Quarter?"

"I think I would like to try one of the tea houses, darling," Kakashi replied as he once again rose to his feet. "Even if they don't have any peppermint tea, the fresh air and the walk might help my stomach settle."

"As you wish, dear," Taka stated as he too rose from his chair. "If you will excuse us, Takeshi-san; maybe we can meet again tomorrow to finish our conversation."

"No worries, friend," Takeshi, the trader from Tetsu no Kuni, replied as he waved them off. "I do hope you feel better soon, madam."

"Thank you, Takeshi-san, you are too kind."

The couple then left the hotel's bar, Taka considerately guiding his 'wife' with one arm around her waist as they headed for the hotel's lobby. They briefly stopped at the front desk to notify the attendant on duty that they were heading into the village proper to visit the tea houses before they stepped out into the night. Keeping close to one another (their cover demanding that they portray themselves as a happy young couple in love), Kakashi filled Taka in on what he learned from his clone by tapping it out in Morse Code on the hand that was resting on his left hip.

As they passed through a particularly dark street on their way to the Restaurant Quarter, the couple paused in the dark just long enough to form a pair of Doton Bunshin that continued on to the tea house in their stead while they sank into the dirt beneath their feet. They waited a good twenty minutes to make certain that their not-so-secret secret escort had taken the bait and followed the decoys. The two veteran ANBU members then reappeared from the ground before they disappeared beneath a camouflage jutsu as they began making their way towards the first of three refuges that Kuma and Tora had informed them that they'd set up around the village.

The first refuge would turn up empty but they would hit pay dirt at the second refuge when they nearly ran into both younger teens as they were on their way out of their hidden camp. Obviously, the two teens had also received the same message that Kakashi had received from his clone. Objective complete, Kakashi signaled for the two fifteen year olds to camouflage themselves and lead them back to the hotel; the two teens had kept their alternate route in and out of the hotel to themselves since there had previously been no need for the older two men to use it.

Kakashi was less than pleased to find that they would be traveling through the floors once again after they shifted into the hotel through the cliff-side. He disliked the feeling of losing himself inside of the wood and the fact that he had to rely upon one of the two teens to get him safely out of the wood at the end of the journey. Still, aside from the discomfort it caused, it was a good way to sneak in and out of places. They would resurface in an empty room on the same level as their assigned suite of rooms for a brief moment to allow Tora to remove their disguises before they sank back into the wood once more in order to change places with their clones.

The changeover went smoothly with Kuma and Tora's clones being sent back out to take their place in the village so that any one that was expecting to see them wouldn't get suspicious if they suddenly disappeared on the same exact day that their group openly left Kumo. The rest of the night was spent preparing for their departure; the Raikage had ordered them to leave first thing in the morning during the urgent meeting that the man had requested out of the blue earlier that afternoon (after finally agreeing to the new treaty without even making yet another attempt to renegotiate the terms).

As he lay on the borrowed bed he'd not slept in once since arriving in Kumo, Kakashi mentally reviewed each and every report that Kirin had passed to him during their brief weekly meetings or through the Kage Bunshin he created to take the place of his first earth clone since they had arrived. He disliked the fact that he could not see the reason for the Raikage's sudden change of heart. The man had been stringing them along for five weeks now and Kakashi knew the man was far too stubborn and too full of pride to back down without reason.

So, why did he?

What does the Raikage know that they didn't?

Was this just a ploy of Kumo's to stab Konoha in the back? Was the Raikage planning to have their delegation ambushed before they could leave the mountains? Did the Hokage send another missive to put more pressure on the man when they didn't return to the village after the first month? Could this be yet another trick, like the first delegation turned out to be? Was the Raikage even now trying to take revenge for the death of the delegation's leader? Had Kumo already deployed an army to lay siege to Konoha a second time? Did the wily Raikage place an assassination contract with Iwa to take them out on their way back?

Round and round, Kakashi thoughts chased themselves as he tried to work out every possible scenario while planning a counter to each and every possibility. Most would assume that the seventeen year old was working himself into a right panic with such thoughts but the truth was that with each plan made, he grew more confident that they would be able to survive anything that the Raikage could throw at them. And while he was annoyed over the fact that he could not deduce the trigger that made the Raikage change his mind, he was more than pleased with the prospect of seeing an end to the current mission and going home.

Kakashi was still awake come morning, though he was feeling far more rested than he had when he'd first laid down the night before. Tora was the second one up and moving and Kakashi watched the green eyed teen languidly stretch like his namesake before he sat up to scan the room. Tora's eyes lingered on Kakashi for a heartbeat and the seventeen year old knew that the kid knew he was awake. Kakashi then let out a soft snort of amusement as the kid rudely shoved Kuma out of their shared bed to wake him up.

Both teens were currently enigmas to Kakashi because he had no idea who they were. Hell, he didn't even know what they looked like beneath their masks since he hadn't had time to sit down with both them and Taka in order to do the usual introductions. He also couldn't help but wonder where the two of them had been hiding all of these years since he had not yet matched the pair to any of his older memories. Oh, he knew they'd been working with the ANBU Corps for at least five years now but that was about all that he knew aside from the information Kasai had given him two months earlier.

That bothered him to a point simply because Tora's leaf green eyes are rather unforgettable; so he should have memories of seeing those eyes without the mask at some point during the past ten to fifteen years – and yet, he didn't.

He also knew that Kuma was far more even tempered than Tora and that Tora tended to hold grudges. The two of them were also inseparable. Something that should have made them stand out more but actually didn't. He was actually more than a little surprised that neither teen had made it into a single Bingo Book; an unheard of feat for a pair of individuals that could wield the Mokuton. Even if Kuma had managed to escape scrutiny, Tora should have attracted attention like nobody's business because he had two Kekkei Genkai.

Correction, he had three Kekkei Genkai; if one counted his accelerated rate of healing.

Kakashi would love to pick the kid's brain for more information but he doubted the kid would willingly spill his secrets any time soon. _Speaking of secrets,_ Kakashi mused to himself. _I still have to talk to him about keeping what he saw to himself; the less people who know I carry the Sharingan the better. I know my Sharingan isn't exactly a secret anymore but it wouldn't do to have it openly announced to the rest of the world. I also don't need anyone prodding the Uchiha into throwing another fit about the fact that I still have Obito's eye._

Putting the matter out of his mind for the time being (their mission wasn't over yet, after all), Kakashi sat up and gathered up his things as the rest of their group began waking up. Fifteen minutes later, all eight of them were ready to go and Kakashi watched as Kirin-teichou once again delegated Tora to transport the satchel that held the signed treaty and a letter to the Hokage from the Yondaime Raikage with Kuma providing backup. Seeing that made him wonder what connection Kirin could possibly have with the two fifteen year olds since that was the only logical explanation for the older ANBU guard to trust the relatively new (and therefore inexperienced) pair with something so important.

He couldn't say that the two teens didn't take their duty of protecting the satchel seriously; Tora had even gone so far as to sleep with the bag on their way to Kumo while Kuma never strayed far from the green eyed teen. It just seemed strange to him for someone to entrust something so important to someone so young. Kakashi took back that thought a heartbeat later as he recalled some of his missions over the years; he'd always been too young in the eyes of the adults and yet they had still trusted him as well; especially Minato.

Of course, the only he reason he was trusted as much as he was despite his age was because people had known what he was capable of accomplishing. That again led him to the conclusion that Kirin knew far more about Tora and Kuma and what they could do than Kakashi did. That kind of knowledge had not come from the files that Kakashi himself had been given to review (if one could call a single stat sheet containing both teens' information a file). Did that mean that Kirin had been assigned as the two teens' handler? If so, why not place them on Kirin's squad once they became full-fledged ANBU Members?

Shaking off the pointless direction of his current thoughts, Kakashi focused on the matter at hand as Kirin signaled that it was time for them to move out. They were met just outside of the door by a single team of Jounin that stepped forward and instructed, "You are to follow us; we will be escorting you out of the village."

"Lead the way," Kirin replied as he inclined his head in acknowledgement.

Kakashi quickly noted that they were not being led back to the village's entrance along the same path that they had been brought to the Foreign Quarter. And while he had spent some time out in the city over the past five weeks, he was not familiar enough with the village to know whether or not they were being guided to the gate or if they were being led to an ambush. The seventeen year old nearly jumped out of his skin when Kuma cheerfully began whistling an unfamiliar but happy tune and to Kakashi surprise, Kirin actually relaxed just the slightest bit.

It was at that point that Kakashi recalled just how much time the two teens had spent exploring the village and he quickly came to the conclusion that Kuma had recognized the path they were taking and that it was the correct path based upon the jaunty tune of the melody he was whistling. Their escort, on the other hand, actually tensed and half reached for their weapons in response to the cheerful sound; the four Jounin obviously assumed (correctly) that the whistling was some kind of signal.

Just when it appeared that the Jounin had reached the end of their tolerance, Tora began whistling the harmony to the song that Kuma had started. Kakashi felt an urge to strangle the teen for all of two seconds until it became apparent that their escort had immediately relaxed in response to the duet. In fact, the longer the pair whistled, the more relaxed the four became when absolutely nothing happened. The real shock came when the youngest Jounin in their escort (the man couldn't be more than eighteen or nineteen years old) began whistling along as well until one of his fellow Jounin reached out to slap him upside the back of the head.

Just five minutes later, they were delivered to the gates where they were quickly checked out by the same guards that had checked them in five weeks earlier. Both men eyed them closely and seemed to count their numbers twice (as if making certain they were all there and that there were no extra bodies tagging along) before they ordered them to leave. Their escort then spread themselves out to prevent any of them from sneaking back into the village. As one, all eight Konoha shinobi bowed low to their escort before they turned around and began trotting down the road that led out of the mountain.

The two fifteen year olds continued to whistle for another mile before they fell silent at the same time as Kakashi sensed their escort become their tail as the four Jounin began following them. After the fifth mile, a discreet signal from Kirin had the group transitioning from a steady trot to a ground eating lope in an effort to increase the distance between them and those that followed without making it look like they were 'fleeing'. When they reached mile thirty-five and the bottom of the mountain road leading up to Kumo, Kakashi felt their pursuers drop away and rapidly fall behind at the same time as he sensed a single, weak point of chakra fall into step with their group from the left.

If not for the fact that the small point of chakra continued to keep pace with them long past the point where a wild animal would have lost interest, Kakashi would have dismissed their new follower as a wild dog or a bird. He didn't completely rule out the possibility that it was an animal following them but now he was thinking more along the lines of a small summons or a trained nin-animal. He also considered the possibility that their new companion was a shinobi that was suppressing their chakra in order to make themselves less noticeable.

Kakashi monitored their stalker for another two miles before he moved up to pass the information to Kirin. The mission leader acknowledged his report and replied back that they would deal with their shadow when they reached their base camp. The man then moved back to give a specific set of instructions to Kuma and Tora before he took point once more. This time, Kakashi could find no fault or confusion in Kirin's logic in using the two youngest members of their team to lay the ambush; he'd seen their skills in trapping and capturing personally – though he was uncertain how effective they would be without the use of their Kekkei Genkai.

They would reach their base camp just as the sun began to set and instead of immediately slipping into the concealed cave, Kirin had them set up a mock camp directly in front of their hidden base. As Kakashi prepared a fire, he watched Kuma and Tora out of the corner of his eye. The two younger teens appeared to be having an argument; the first such argument he'd ever witnessed between the two of them since they'd been assigned to his squad and that knowledge actually left him feeling uncomfortable.

As if the sight of the pair arguing was a sign of impending doom.

At the same time, he sensed their little stalker moving in closer and part of him was unsurprised when the person (or trained animal) drew closer to the teens that had resorted to physically shoving one another. The mock shoving match (Kakashi had noted that neither boy was actually making full contact) continued to escalate until it seemed that every one's attention was solely on the bickering teens. It was at that point that their shadow crept right up to the camp; as if the loud fight was actually feeding the stalker's confidence.

Kakashi would see a brief flash of what he believed was yellow hair just before the two teens sprang into action in mid shove; both boys pouncing on their prey with the efficiency of stalking tigers. There was a brief scuffle before Tora rose to his feet and jerked a smaller figure up with him as he spun the person around into a choke hold with one hand while his other hand pressed a kunai to the person's heart. Kuma stood up at almost the exact same instant and drew the tanto from the middle of his back before he leveled the blade so that their new prisoner was staring at the sharp point sitting a hair's breadth away from their left eye.

Kuma then made a strangled sound in the back of his throat that sounded half annoyed and half amused as he leaned back just enough to put a half an inch between their prisoner and his blade. When it became obvious that their prisoner was not going to make any attempts to escape, Tora leaned down to hiss, "Walk forward, slowly. Do not make any attempt to escape or we will not hesitate to cut you down."

The trio then moved into the center of the camp with far more grace than expected given their awkward positions. It was at that point that Kakashi got a good look at their stalker and he nearly cursed when he saw it was a little girl. Kakashi could have sworn he heard Tora curse several times under his breath the moment the younger teen saw their captive's face but he couldn't be certain because it sounded more like a steady stream of hissing than actual words.

The girl spun around to face the green eyed teen the moment Tora lowered his kunai and relaxed his hold on her and Kakashi felt like bashing his head against the rocks when she begged, "Take me with you, please! I promise I won't get in your way. Just please, please don't make me go back. You're the only one that ever stood up for me. The only one that didn't see me as a monster the moment you looked at me."

* * *

**Translations:** Japanese to English

Kirin – giraffe  
Kuma – bear  
Taka – hawk  
Tetsu no Kuni – Iron Country  
Tora – tiger  
Youjiyo – little girl

**Notes: **

The girl – for those of you who think you know who the girl is and who recall her canon age, please don't tell me I made a mistake; I changed her age for a reason. Those of you that haven't figured out who the girl is please be patient; it will be revealed within a couple of chapters.

Samurai Sai the Vampire Hunter – a made up manga/comic book fabricated by the author for this FanFiction

* * *

**11-15-15:** _Minor edits made to chapter to fix spelling/grammar mistakes and removed unnecessary author's notes._


	23. The Complications

**Disclaimer:** _All HP characters are the property of JKR, the WB, and respective publishing companies and all Naruto characters are the property of Masashi Kishimoto. This is nothing more than a simple FanFiction that I have written. I have made no money from this or any of the other stories I have posted on this or other sites._

**Warnings:** _Mild to moderate violence, character death, alternate universe (i.e. kiss canon goodbye), OCC behaviors and personalities, a number of original characters and obscure canon characters to flesh out family trees, random chosen last names to give a number of characters surnames, and who knows what else._

**AN:** _This story is self-beta'd; so there may be occasional grammatical or spelling errors that crop up every now and then and for those I apologize in advance._

* * *

Chapter Twenty-Three: The Complications

_October 04, 0295 AtD, 6:28 PM  
Outside of Kumogakure no Sato, Kaminari no Kuni_

"I am afraid that you are mistaken, child; you could not have seen any of us except from a distance because we did not leave our hotel except for the times that we spent in meetings with the Raikage," Kisuke corrected while Kojimaru was still trying to process the fact that the little girl he'd rescued from perverts just a few days earlier had somehow managed to find and follow him all because he'd saved her from her attackers.

"Chigau!" the girl countered with conviction as she shook her head; the vigorous movement causing the tightly wrapped braid she wore to whip back and forth. "I know he's the one who saved me because I recognized his eyes. He's the only one I've ever seen with eyes the color of grass."

Kojimaru felt sick to his stomach as he felt more than one pair of annoyed glares flick in his direction as he finally recalled the way the girl had stared him in the eye after he'd cleaned her up. His attention was then drawn back to the girl as she reached out to grab hold of his shirt as she blurted out, "You said you were a friend and that you wanted to help me. I'm begging you; please help me! I can't go back! I can't take it any more."

Kojimaru felt his heart falter in his chest as he stared down into the child's shimmering blue eyes that were filled with an endless torrent of fear and pain buoyed by desperate hope. It was like looking in a mirror as he vividly recalled seeing that same look in his own eyes on more than one occasion when he'd been growing up. Seeing that pain in another's eyes hurt in ways that took his breath away and made him want to kill someone even as it froze him in his place.

"Let's take this inside before we draw any more attention to ourselves," Kisuke instructed as he stepped forward to lift the girl up into his arms. The girl squirmed for a moment as she twisted around in order to keep hold of Kojimaru's gaze as his honorary uncle carried her towards their hidden base. Just before they disappeared into the base, Kisuke glanced back and ordered, "Snap out of it and help clear up the tracks."

"Hai," Kojimaru automatically replied as he tore his gaze away from the girl's and robotically began removing all evidence that the child had ever been there; which included sending a Doton Bunshin to erase her back trail.

Numbness settled over Kojimaru as he worked; the knowledge that he'd messed up big time pressing down on him like a physical weight. He couldn't believe that he'd been so stupid. He knew his eyes were unique and that they stood out. He also knew that being recognized on this mission would cause problems down the road if the Raikage should ever wish to get revenge for being coerced into signing the new treaty. Or for the capture and subsequent execution of the man that had attempted to kidnap the Hyuuga Heiress.

He had been so careful. He had taken careful pains to keep his eyes hidden behind different styles of goggles and glasses each time he changed his disguise. And then he'd gone and messed up because he'd let his temper get the best of him when he'd found those two perverts accosting a little girl. No, not just a little girl; a little kunoichi in training. Worse yet, was the fact that he'd not once noticed that she'd been following him closely enough to have seen him entering the Foreign Quarter in his disguise because that was the only way she would have linked his disguise to his masked visage.

His mistake had put the entire team in jeopardy.

If the girl had told even one other person about the boy with green eyes that had saved her…

It made him sick just thinking about it.

Kojimaru was pulled out of his downward spiral as he finished erasing the signs of the scuffle that had taken place when he and Tenzou had captured his stalker by a hand falling on his shoulder and he glanced up to find Inu staring down at him with an unreadable look in his single visible eye. Shortly after he met the older teen's gaze, Inu instructed, "Make another Bunshin and leave it out here before you head inside."

Kojimaru nodded morosely as he formed yet another Doton Bunshin. Once the clone was fully formed, he made his way to the cliff and shifted through the wall into the hidden cave. A brief search of the cave let him know that most of his current teammates were inside already. He studiously avoided meeting the blue-eyed gaze of his personal stalker as he made his way over to the clone he'd left in the cave and poured a bit more chakra into it so that it would last a while longer.

He then made his way over to where Tenzou was seated against the wall and sat down beside his brother. Tenzou shifted so that their shoulders were touching as soon as Kojimaru had settled and the green eyed teen drew comfort in the fact that his brother, at least, wasn't angry at him over his mistake. Inu would be the last one to slip inside; Taka and one of Kisuke's squad members had remained outside in order to stand watch over their decoy camp.

"Now that most of us are here; would one of you care to explain?" Kisuke demanded as he turned his mask in Kojimaru and Tenzou's direction.

"The incident took place early on the morning of the twenty-ninth," Tenzou began after he cast a brief glance at Kojimaru. "We were on our way to the library when we heard a small commotion coming from an alley. We went to investigate because we were the only ones in the immediate area and we found two older men molesting a little girl."

"I'm not little!" the girl in question interjected hotly before Kisuke silenced her by lightly dropping his hand on her head.

Tenzou waited for her to fall silent before he continued, "I stayed by the alley's entrance to keep an eye out for a passing shinobi we could report the incident to or in case there was a third individual involved while my partner moved in to stop the crime. Once both men had been subdued, my partner approached the victim and engaged her in a short conversation as he treated her injuries. The girl refused an escort to her next destination when it was offered before she took off. That was the last time we'd seen her until just now. After the girl left, I noticed that my partner's glasses had been knocked askew at some point and fixed them for him before we continued on to the library."

"And do you have anything to add?" Kisuke inquired as his gaze shifted to Kojimaru and Kojimaru shook his head no.

"Why didn't either of you report the incident when we met on the thirtieth?" Inu demanded from where he was leaning against the wall with his arms crossed.

"It didn't seem important at the time."

"It didn't seem important? One of you broke cover and it didn't seem important?"

"We didn't break cover and at the time we thought it had been too dark in the alley for anyone to make out the color of his eyes," Tenzou countered in Kojimaru's defense. "We were still wearing our disguises during the incident and we never gave the girl our names; not even the aliases that we were using at the time. No one approached us to interrogate us about the incident and we were not tailed by any shinobi at any point between the incident and when we checked in. Or even when we returned to the main part of the village in a new disguise after our meeting."

"And yet, the two of you were followed by the one who saw you," Inu pointed out as he gestured towards the sulking girl that was seated beside Kisuke. "How do you know that she didn't inform her parents or the guards about you? For all you know, she was sent to track you because they knew you would not see her as a threat and even now there could be a squad of hunter nin on our trail."

"There isn't," the girl blurted out. "I didn't tell anyone. I don't have any parents. I don't have a guardian either. I've lived alone for years now. No one would have cared even if I had told anyone; the whole village hates me. Even my teachers hated me."

"So, you decided to trust a perfect stranger to take you in and take you away?" Inu asked skeptically.

"He saved me from the creepy men that were touching me and hurting me. Anyone else would have just walked away. If I go back, those men will just hunt me down again. I even saw them watching my apartment when I went back to pack my things."

"We can't take you with us, child; someone is bound to miss you…"

"You can't make me go back. I won't go back. And if you leave me behind, I'll just follow you."

"Or we could slit your throat and bury your body in this cave where it will never be found," Inu countered in a bored tone.

Kojimaru had to force himself not to react to his captain's words as he tasted bile in the back of his throat. He wanted to hate the seventeen year old for threatening the child but he couldn't because he knew that it was his fault that the girl had followed them in the first place. If not for his mistake, the girl would not have had a reason to follow them.

"Then you would be doing me a favor because I would rather die than to be forced to live in that village even one more day," the girl stated in a matter-of-fact tone that caused both Kojimaru and Tenzou to flinch; both teens automatically thinking back to their time in Orochimaru's lab.

"I suppose there is only one thing for us to do then," Kisuke stated as he rose to his feet, scooped the now terrified but resigned girl up off the floor, walked across the cave, and unceremoniously dumped the girl in Kojimaru's lap. "She's your stray, gaki; therefore she's your responsibility. The two of you will need to figure out how to get her out of Kaminari no Kuni without any of Kumo's forces seeing her because if they see us with an extra body, then they will assume that we kidnapped her after her disappearance is noted by the Academy Instructors and use that as an excuse to detain or execute us."

The girl sat tensely in his lap for a heartbeat before she twisted around to wrap her arms around Kojimaru's neck and bury her face against his shoulder. Kojimaru sat frozen in surprise until he felt her body trembling as her tears soaked his shirt. Coming to the conclusion that the girl was experiencing a form of shock due to her life being turned upside down (by her own actions), Kojimaru instinctively wrapped her in a hug as he turned to Tenzou. His brother just shrugged at him in response and Kojimaru rolled his eyes and shook his head.

"Are you sure that is wise?" Inu inquired as Kisuke walked away from the trio.

"No, and I am certain that it will only complicate matters at some point down the road but, at the same time, it is the only choice I can make given the circumstances. Leaving her behind, while preferable, wasn't an option because the child was determined to go with us no matter what and killing her would have only created far bigger problems."

"What is that supposed to mean?" Inu asked in confusion laced with more than a little frustration.

Kojimaru glanced up and met Kisuke's gaze as the man replied, "It means that I had no wish to break two young men because one of them made a small mistake while he was defending an innocent child." Kisuke then broke eye contact as he turned to face Inu. "And make no mistake, killing the girl after she spoke of her willingness to die rather than return to her previous home would have broken both young men. Or did you not see their reaction to her words?"

"I noticed… but why would…?"

"This is neither the time nor the place to speak of such things," Kisuke interrupted before Inu could finish asking his question. "I am also not the one you should be asking."

"Fine, I will leave it be for now."

Kojimaru found no comfort in Inu's agreement to drop his questions for the time being. He was not looking forward to the interrogation that he suspected their captain would put him and Tenzou through the moment they returned to Konoha. An interrogation he suspected the man had wanted to start the day they'd been assigned to their current mission. Heaving a mental sigh of resignation, Kojimaru shoved his worries aside as he turned his attention back to the girl in his arms as he wondered what the hell he was supposed to do with her.

A tap on the knee drew his attention back to Tenzou and the moment he looked up, Tenzou signed, _Stop worrying so loudly. We'll deal with it when we get home. For now, we need to focus on what we're going to do about getting your cute little stalker home._

_The way I see it, we have two options; one, call on one of our summonses and have them take her to their home until we reach the village or two, disguise her as one of us and let her walk in the open while the one whose place she is taking travels underground until we crossed over into Hi no Kuni,_ Kojimaru replied in kind.

_I don't think the others will agree to the first option because calling on one of our summonses would draw too much attention to us. The second idea has merit but she might not be able to keep up with us once we pick up the pace again. Why not leave a clone with the group while one of us takes her with us underground?_

Kojimaru considered the changes to his original idea before he asked, _Are you certain that would work? One of us traveling alone through the ground isn't that noticeable but taking some one with us requires far more chakra._

_It wouldn't be noticeable if we stayed directly beneath the group because the combined chakra of those above ground would mask that of the two traveling underground due to how small the girl's reserves are,_ Tenzou replied after giving the problem some thought. _We could take turns taking her too; so neither one of us grows too exhausted._

Kojimaru nodded in response as he noticed that the girl's breathing had evened out during their silent conversation and that her arms were no longer clinging to him so tightly. A brief downward glance confirmed what he suspected; the girl had cried her self to sleep in his arms. Letting out a soft sigh, Kojimaru glanced back up at his brother only to find Tenzou's dark eyes dancing with laughter at his expense. Kojimaru reached out and poked Tenzou in the side in response before he tipped his head towards the sleeping girl.

Tenzou nodded as he climbed to his feet and dug into his utility pouch for his scroll of supplies. Less than a minute later, Tenzou helped Kojimaru tuck the girl into Tenzou's sleeping bag. Once that was done, Kojimaru ducked behind one of the support pillars that held the cave's ceiling in place so that he could change out of his now damp shirt. He then left Tenzou to watch over the sleeping girl while he started making a simple soup out of some dried venison he'd had in his storage scrolls. Every few minutes, his gaze would be drawn to the sleeping girl as he wondered what would happen to her once they reached Konoha.

When he wasn't dwelling on the girl's future, his thoughts turned themselves towards his own fate. Even a village idiot could tell that he was in serious trouble. He'd messed up. He'd messed up while on a mission. He'd messed up while on a delicate high priority mission where such a mistake could easily spark a war. And what was worse was that he knew better. He'd been trained better.

Kojimaru was startled out of his thoughts for the second time that night by a hand falling on his shoulder. This time, it was Kisuke who had snuck up on him. The green eyed teen briefly met his honorary uncle's gaze before he dropped his eyes back down to the nearly finished soup.

"Stop worrying about it before you make yourself sick," Kisuke murmured quietly as he crouched down beside the teen and pulled him against his chest. "Yes, you made a mistake. Yes, the consequences could have been worse. Yes, you will probably be lectured by at least four people for slipping up while on a mission. But it is not the end of the world and the worst that happened is that you picked up a little stray that thinks the world of you because you saved her from a terrible injustice. Every one makes a mistake every now and then, even you."

Kojimaru sagged against the man that had helped raise him alongside of his godfather as Kisuke's soft reassurances chased away the fear that had been hovering in the back of his mind since the moment he'd recognized the girl. Kisuke chuckled softly and gave him a brief hug before he let him go and asked, "Have the two of you figured out how you're going to get her out of Kaminari without being seen?"

"Yeah, one of us will take her underground while a clone takes our place in the group," Kojimaru replied as he stirred the soup to keep it from burning. "To avoid someone sensing us, we can keep pace with the rest of the team so that we won't stand out. The other possible idea I had was to send her to the home of a summons until we reached the village."

"Both ideas have merit," Kisuke agreed as he glanced towards the girl. "They can also be carried out by almost any member of our team; not just you or your partner. We'll stick with the first plan and use the second one as a plan b in case we run into trouble."

Kojimaru nodded in acknowledgement as he pulled the pot of soup from the fire, unsealed the bowls and spoons from his supplies, and began dishing up the food. He passed the first bowl to Kisuke before he began passing bowls out to the rest of the group as they gathered around him the moment they realized the food was ready. Once all of the adults had been served, Kojimaru collected the last three bowls and made his way over to where Tenzou was still sitting beside the sleeping girl and handed one bowl to his brother. He then sat down next to his brother and sat the last two bowls on the floor so he could shake the girl awake.

The girl jolted awake the moment his hand touched her shoulder and stared at him in confusion for a moment before she asked, "Nani…?"

"Supper is ready, youjiyo," Kojimaru answered as he reclaimed both bowls and held one out to her.

"Arigatou," the girl softly replied as she timidly accepted the proffered bowl.

The girl would hungrily devour three full bowls of soup before she curled up in the sleeping bag once more and drifted back to sleep while Kojimaru watched over her and Tenzou washed and put away the dishes. He and Tenzou would then spend an hour playing card games before Kisuke quietly ordered them to get some sleep. Kojimaru unsealed his sleeping bag and unzipped it all the way so they could share the bag while Tenzou pulled out his extra blanket. The green eyed teen didn't bother taking out his own extra blanket since the cold never bothered him.

It would take him nearly an hour to fall asleep and it was only a decade's worth of training and strict discipline that prevented nightmares (triggered by his mistake) from haunting him as he slept; his body and mind trained to block out such things while on missions.

Kojimaru would wake up an hour earlier than usual the next morning due to feeling uncomfortably warm. He was more than a little confused when he opened his eyes and saw that someone had thrown a sleeping bag over him while he'd slept. It wasn't until he tried to sit up that he realized there was a warm body pressed up against him. The tousled head of blonde hair identified his unexpected bedmate as his little stalker. It didn't take him long to surmise that she had been the one to cover him up since the sleeping bag was the same one she was using.

Knowing there was no point in going back to sleep, Kojimaru carefully extracted himself from the sleeping bags and moved a short distance away so that he could cool his overheated body down without affecting Tenzou or the girl. He nearly sighed out loud in relief as a layer of ice coated his body beneath his clothes courtesy of his Hyouton. As his body temperature slowly dropped down to normal (which for him was several degrees below what was considered normal for the average human), the teen made a mental note to ask the girl not to cover him up again.

Once he no longer felt half-cooked, Kojimaru stretched out his muscles in preparation for the day's travel. He was just finishing up when he caught sight of the others waking up out of the corner of his eye. That was his signal to start breaking up camp so that they could move out soon. He started by terminating the Moku Bunshin that had been watching over the camp for the past five weeks; draining the clone of its chakra with a touch of his hand until all that remained was the leaf from which it had been grown. He tucked the leaf into his pocket so that he could use it to create the girl's disguise before he moved to wake up his charge so that he and Tenzou could pack away their sleeping bags.

After the camp had been packed up and a cold breakfast of protein bars and fruit had been eaten, Kojimaru took the leaf back out of his pocket as he stepped up beside the girl, placed the leaf on the top of her head (where she couldn't see it), and instructed, "Alright, youjiyo; close your eyes and hold still so that I can give you a disguise for the rest of the journey."

"Stop calling me that! My name is…"

"Not important right now," Kojimaru interrupted as he reached out to lightly flick her on the nose with his free hand. "Right now, you have no name, just like we have no name. We can worry about introductions when we reach the end of our journey. Now, close your eyes."

The girl huffed in irritation but didn't say anything further as she finally obeyed the order to close her eyes. Once he was certain she wasn't peeking, Kojimaru silently used his Mokuton: Kamen no Jutsu. When the remains of the leaf crumbled away, the girl was dressed from head to toe in an identical copy of the uniforms and masks that all members of their team were wearing, her eyes had been changed to a dark brown, and her height had been altered so she didn't stand out. He took a moment to inspect the disguise to make certain there were no flaws before he dropped his hand away from her head.

"You can open your eyes now, I'm finished."

"That felt weird. What did you do to me? How did you change my clothes?"

"I didn't change your clothes. I hid them. Stop picking at the disguise or you'll make it fall apart."

"Are the three of you ready to go?" Kisuke inquired as the rest of the team exited the cave after Inu had checked with the guards on the other side to make certain the coast was clear. Kojimaru and Tenzou both nodded in reply while the girl was still too wrapped up in her inspection of the changes that Kojimaru had made to her clothes. "Good. Which one of you will be taking the first turn transporting your little stray and which one of you will be dismantling the cave?"

"I'll take her today," Tenzou offered after he and Kojimaru exchanged a brief glance.

"Alright, go ahead and take her underground now."

"Hai," Tenzou replied as he lifted the girl up off of her feet and swung her around to his back. "Hold on tight, youjiyo, or you'll be left behind."

The two of them sank into the ground a moment later and Kojimaru couldn't resist letting out a soft chuckle when the girl yelped in surprise just before she vanished from view. He then put the girl out of his mind as he began running through the series of hand seals necessary to fill the cave with dirt the moment he saw Kisuke step through the wall. He was buried beneath a ton of dirt and rocks two minutes later but unharmed as he'd merged into the mass of shifting earth the moment he'd activated the jutsu. He stepped out into the open air a heartbeat later to join the rest of the team.

His decoy clone from the prior night was then terminated next before the group moved out and headed south at a ground eating lope. As they ran, Kojimaru kept pace beside Tenzou's decoy clone so that he could protect the clone from any potential attacks and so that he could communicate with his brother through the clone if the need arose. Throughout the course of the day, Kojimaru had to continuously force his mind to focus on his surroundings least he get wrapped up in his thoughts and worries. It was a tiresome struggle and by the time they made camp that night, he was more than ready to curl up and sleep from sheer mental exhaustion.

He wasn't the only one that was utterly exhausted; traveling through the ground with a passenger for an entire day had severely taxed Tenzou's reserves. Even reabsorbing his clone (to reclaim the remaining chakra) didn't give the taller teen much of an energy boost and he'd crawl into his sleeping bag right after supper and sleep through the night. After supper, Kojimaru would make another decoy clone before he spent the night in a small burrow beneath the camp with Tenzou and the girl. He'd wake up feeling overheated and the girl plastered to his side for the second time in a row the next morning after he'd forgotten to ask her not to do that.

The rest of the day would then be spent tunneling endlessly through several tons of dirt and rocks as he struggled to keep pace with those above the ground and ignore the suffocating feeling of being trapped in the dirt where he couldn't feel the wind or sense the trees (not that there was really any of the latter to sense in this barren country). It also didn't help that his ability to sense the chakra of his teammates had been severely hampered due to the nature chakra found within the earth drowning it out. More than once he wished he had Tenzou's ability to connect to his Moku Bunshin; it would have made it far easier for him to stay directly beneath the group.

As it was, Kojimaru had to rely heavily upon his sense of direction, his knowledge and memory of the geography of Kaminari no Kuni, his instincts, and the small pulses of chakra that his brother and Kisuke would send into the ground every five miles to guide him.

Near the middle of the afternoon, Kojimaru felt a knot of worry return his stomach when Kisuke sent a trio of short, back to back pulses of chakra into the ground; the agreed upon signal that they were stopping and that they had company. By the time his brain had finished registering the third pulse, he'd already stopped his forward momentum and dropped down another forty feet in order to make it harder for anyone on the surface to sense him and his passenger. He then made himself comfortable and quietly warned the girl to keep silent while he waited for the all clear signal to be sent.

When the thirty minute mark came and went without the all clear signal, Kojimaru began to worry that something had happened on the surface. The knot that had formed in his stomach when he'd first been given the signal to stop and burrow deeper would double in size when the forty minute mark passed without a whisper from the surface. It wasn't until nearly an entire hour passed that he picked up two short bursts of chakra followed by a single long one and he let out a soft sigh of relief as he began moving south once more while angling his trajectory towards the surface so that he could move back up to the previous level he'd been traveling at.

Less than an hour after their unscheduled stop, Kojimaru felt the comforting presence of trees invading the earth as he began moving near and through scattered sections of tree roots. All feelings of discomfort that came from being trapped beneath the surface vanished in an instant as his connection to the living forest slammed into him once more. The feeling of belonging rejuvenated him and he was soon slingshotting between tap roots instead of just barreling endlessly through the dirt. Soon after finding himself amongst the trees once more, they began rapidly climbing in elevation as the temperature began dropping equally as fast; they had reached Shimo no Kuni.

The sound of teeth chittering right next to his ear and the steady shivers radiating from the body clinging to his back had Kojimaru digging into his utility pouch for the thick, pale gray ANBU issued winter cloak that he always carried but never wore without slowing down. Once he had it out, he paused for two full heartbeats so that he could sling it around his back to settle overtop of the freezing girl holding onto him before he began moving again. When she attempted to share the cloak with him, he stopped her hands and tucked the edges underneath her arms instead as he lowly told her to tuck the edges in beneath the rest of her body to conserve her body heat.

After a slight hesitation, she did and within just a few minutes her teeth stilled and the tremors wracking her body slowed to a stop. Kojimaru, in the meantime, reveled in the still dropping temperature; it made him feel alive and the pervasive chill sang to his Hyouton. He briefly wished he was up on the surface where it was colder and where he could touch the ice and snow that clung to the lush mountains that made up the entirety of Shimo no Kuni; mountains that were the complete opposite of those barren ranges that littered Kaminari no Kuni.

After leaving Kaminari no Kuni's borders, the eight shinobi and one tag-a-long would travel for another four hours in order to put as much distance between them and the border as possible before they stopped for the night. Which amounted to a full two hours beyond what they would usually travel in a day because they had been trying to make up for the hour's worth of travel they had lost when they had been stopped during the afternoon. Kojimaru was almost disappointed when he sensed the twin pulses that indicated they were stopping once more.

Shoving down the playfulness that had filled him the moment the temperature dropped, Kojimaru slowed down and made a cozy little earthen cave between a trio of close growing tap roots. He then peeled his half frozen charge from his back so he could dig out his sleeping bag and start a small fire; both amenities intended for the still partially chilled girl watching him with wide eyes. She let out a strangled squeal of annoyance when Kojimaru tossed the sleeping bag over her head without any warning and the green eyed teen couldn't help but snicker at the rather ineffective glare she leveled at him from beneath the bulky bag.

The girl huffed and grumbled under her breath but quickly burrowed into the insulated sleeping bag in search of warmth before she inched closer to where Kojimaru was building the fire. Once he had a cheerful, if small, fire going, Kojimaru set about making a small pot of tea and a pot of soup. He paused halfway through preparing the soup to toss a protein bar to the girl when he heard her stomach growl loudly in the small burrow.

Just a few minutes later, Kojimaru pulled the boiling kettle of water from the fire and set the tea leaves to steeping before he finished adding the dried vegetables and dried flakes of fish to the soup pot. Next, he unsealed a pair of cups, bowls, and spoons for them to use while he waited for the leaves to finish steeping. He then spent the next few minutes tending to the soup, stirring the contents of the pot to prevent the bottom from burning. Satisfied that the soup was coming along nicely, Kojimaru turned his attention back to the tea pot, filled the two cups he'd pulled out, and added a touch of honey and lemon juice to both before passing one to the girl.

He had just taken his first sip of black tea laced liberally with lemon and honey when their small sanctuary was invaded by Tenzou. Kojimaru eyed his brother carefully for a heartbeat, noting the exhaustion that still lingered in his dark eyes, before he unsealed a third cup and prepared a cup of tea for the younger teen. Tenzou accepted the cup with a soft moan of anticipation and appreciation that made Kojimaru grin beneath his mask. Another ten minutes passed as the three of them silently savored their tea (Kojimaru because that was what he did and the other two because of the warmth it provided) before Tenzou finally brought up his reason for joining them.

"They are waiting for you up top; someone burnt the soup again."

"Figures, you'd think he'd know better than to even try by now."

"You'd think the others would know better than to let him try by now, given how long they've been a team," Tenzou retorted with a snort.

"True. Go ahead and help yourself to my half of the soup; I'll eat up top before I come back."

Kojimaru then refilled his half empty tea cup and covered it with his hand before he merged into the nearest tap root and made his way up to the surface. He stepped out of the pine tree whose roots he'd been using as a passageway just a few seconds later and into a light snowstorm. He stilled for exactly sixteen full seconds and tilted his face upwards as his body temperature dropped even lower and his blood filled with a freezing rush of ice cold chakra. He then snapped out of the spell as he pulled the chill from his tea (to keep it from freezing) and headed towards the snow covered tarps that had been secured over the group's camp in order to keep the snow out and the heat in.

He briefly shifted himself back under the ground to avoid opening the overlapping tarps (the others would be annoyed if he allowed any cold air to slip into their little pocket of carefully hoarded heat). Once he resurfaced inside of the tent, he had to pause and give his body a moment to adjust to the change in temperature as he broke out into a sweat due to the sweltering wave of heat hit him. He let out a soft growl of annoyance as he applied a thin layer of ice to his skin beneath his uniform to compensate for the heat until he was no longer sweating.

"The temperature difference would not have affected you quite as much if you'd just come straight to the tent instead of taking a detour though the snow first," Kisuke dryly pointed out as glanced towards the teen.

"I wouldn't have had to if someone hadn't foolishly let you try to cook again," Kojimaru retorted around a sip of tea as he headed for the small campfire at the center of the makeshift shelter as he pulled out his supply scroll once more.

"How else would we get you to willingly cook for us if you didn't feel sorry for us each time he utterly destroyed our supper?" one of Kisuke's subordinates cheekily asked.

Kojimaru snorted as he started a second, larger pot of fish and vegetable soup and replied, "Why do you think I make it a point to avoid being assigned on missions with the lot of you for the most part?"

"I can and will file a request to have your pay docked for disrespecting a superior," Kisuke teasingly threatened in response to the barbs aimed at his cooking skills, or lack thereof.

"No you won't," Kojimaru shot back without a missing a beat. "Both your bed and your favorite chair have wooden frames and we both know you dislike finding splinters in uncomfortable places."

"Insolent gaki," Kisuke huffed around a smother chuckle.

"I live to annoy," Kojimaru agreed to a chorus of guffaws from the rest of those present as he settled beside the soup pot to savor his tea while he watched over the simmering pot.

* * *

**Translations:** Japanese to English

Arigatou – thank you  
Chigau – can be used to mean wrong, no, or to differ  
Doton Bunshin – earth/dirt clone  
Gaki – brat  
Hai – yes  
Kaminari no Kuni – Lighting Country  
Moku Bunshin – wood clone  
Mokuton; Kamen no Jutsu – Wood Disguise Technique  
Nani – what  
Shimo no Kuni – Frost Country  
Youjiyo – little girl

* * *

**11-15-15:** _Minor edits made to chapter to fix spelling/grammar mistakes and removed unnecessary author's notes._


	24. The Impression

**Disclaimer:** _All HP characters are the property of JKR, the WB, and respective publishing companies and all Naruto characters are the property of Masashi Kishimoto. This is nothing more than a simple FanFiction that I have written. I have made no money from this or any of the other stories I have posted on this or other sites._

**Warnings:** _Mild to moderate violence, character death, alternate universe (i.e. kiss canon goodbye), OCC behaviors and personalities, a number of original characters and obscure canon characters to flesh out family trees, random chosen last names to give a number of characters surnames, and who knows what else._

**AN:** _This story is self-beta'd; so there may be occasional grammatical or spelling errors that crop up every now and then and for those I apologize in advance._

* * *

Chapter Twenty-Four: The Impression

_October 09, 0295 AtD, 12:03 PM  
Outside of Konohagakure no Sato, Hi no Kuni_

After another two and a half days of covertly transporting their little runaway kunoichi in training, the two squads of Konoha ANBU and their tag-a-long finally halted long enough to bring the girl up to the surface for the first time in almost a week. Most of the group laughed at the girl's over exaggerated reaction to being above ground once more; the way she took great gulping breaths of air, gaped at the monolithic trees that made up the great forests of Hi no Kuni, and dug her fingers into the grass and weeds that covered the forest floor.

As he loosed a few chuckles of his own, Kakashi noted that the only ones that were not laughing at the girl's antics were Kirin, Kuma, and Tora. Both Kuma and Tora watched the girl with understanding eyes filled with a touch of shared pain while Kirin watched the two boys instead; his eyes tinged with melancholy and unmistakable pride. Filing the trio's reaction away for later study, Kakashi pulled his attention away from the group and focused on their surroundings as he scanned the area for potential threats.

"Are you feeling better now, child?" Kirin inquired when the girl finally settled down and sat down on the ground.

"Hai."

"Good, I am sorry that we had to keep you hidden for so long but we couldn't risk someone seeing you with us while we were still so far from our destination. You will also be happy to know that you will only have to travel in secret one last time before you are free to walk the rest of the way."

"Yippee!" the girl cried out in delight in response to that declaration and Kakashi snorted softly in renewed amusement.

"I'm glad you approve," Kirin quipped with obvious amusement of his own. The mission leader then turned towards to the two youngest members of their team to ask, "Do the two of you still have enough energy to transport the team about twenty miles south and west of our current location?"

The two teens glanced at each other to hold yet another one of their silent conversations before they both replied, "Hai."

"Then let's go; the sooner we get there, the sooner we can drop these disguises," Kirin instructed as he scooped the girl up from the ground and passed her to Kuma.

The brown eyed teen then snagged Kirin by the hand and disappeared into the nearest tree in the blink of an eye. Kakashi frowned slightly when he realized that the taller teen had just left Tora to transport the majority of the group. To his surprise, the green eyed teen didn't make even a token complaint as he quickly and carefully plucked a handful of leaves from the nearest bush and stuffed most of them into his utility pouch before he created four clones from the remaining leaves. The clones then each collected a member of the group while the original Tora took hold of Kakashi's wrist.

A minute later, Kakashi was once again experiencing the disorienting and discomforting sensation of being pulled through wood; only the feeling was ten times worse because he was traveling through living wood instead of dead wood floors. A seeming eternity later, he was once again standing in the middle of the forest fighting an urge to empty his stomach of everything he'd eaten in the last week. The rest of the group, bar the two teens, wasn't fairing much better; the girl had actually lost her breakfast and possibly some of her supper from the night before given how large of a mess she'd made.

"That was awful," the girl declared once her stomach had stopped emptying itself.

"A person's first time traveling through a living tree is always the worst and the longer a person spends in the tree, the worse the disorientation will affect him or her," Tora absently explained as he set about dispelling the four clones that had transported the other four members of their group. "Or so I have been told; I've never felt the disorientation that those I've taken with me have complained about at the end of the journey."

"It felt a bit weird the first time I traveled through a tree but after the third time it felt no different than traveling through the dirt," Kuma supplied as he used a doton jutsu to bury the girl's mess.

"You're both weird," the girl declared as she swung around to stare at the two teens.

"Of course we are," Tora stated airily. "It would be too boring if we were normal. It's much more fun to be weird."

"Far more entertaining for the rest of us too," Taka quipped with a near silent chuckle from behind Kakashi.

"Alright, enough playing around," Kirin ordered just a few seconds later. "It's time for us to shed our current disguises and prepare for our homecoming. That also means that your little stray will need a new temporary face, Tora."

"Hai, Kirin-teichou," Tora replied as he stepped up to the girl and ended the current disguise that had placed the girl in a fabricated copy of the ANBU uniform and blank mask.

The poor girl looked like a bedraggled mess once the jutsu had ended but the image was soon displaced by the new disguise that wrapped around the girl a heartbeat later. Kakashi marveled again over the efficiency and simplicity of the rather complex jutsu that he was pretty certain the green eyed teen had personally created. The girl was now wearing an outfit that could have come out of one of Konoha's many shops and her hair had been turned a nondescript medium brown while her eyes were once more deep brown. All in all, she looked rather forgettable.

Kakashi took a moment to swap out his mask and remove the hood from his head before he studied the two youngest members of his team from the corner of his eye. He hadn't failed to notice the way that both teens took careful pains to allow no one to see their faces as they switched their masks as well. He briefly wondered if it was just habit or if they were really that untrusting of their present company. That soon led him to wondering if either teen would ever willing bare their faces to him or Taka.

"Your name is Tora?" the girl asked curiously as she stepped up to the green eyed teen and stared intently at the orange and white cat's mask he had donned.

"It is," Tora agreed with a nod as he briefly glanced down at the girl.

"Is that your real name?" the girl practically demanded as she grabbed hold of his hand to prevent him from walking away and Kakashi frowned beneath his mask at the child's invasive line of questioning.

Tora tipped his head to one side and his eyes took on a calculating glint as he returned his gaze to the child and Kakashi wondered what the teen was thinking. The teen then hummed a single soft note beneath his breath before he replied, "It is a name that is as real as this face I wear and that is all you need to know."

Kakashi's brain immediately slipped into overdrive as he analyzed that cryptic response. Was the teen referring to the ANBU mask he wore? Was his response an indication that he was wearing a disguise beneath his mask? Did that mean that the teen had a disguise he wore when he wasn't wearing the mask? Was that an implication that the teen had no life outside of the mask, much like Yagi and a handful of the other older ANBU Operatives that never removed their masks? Or was it simply Tora deflecting the child's questioning in order to get her to stop asking him?

The seventeen year old ANBU Captain filed the remark into the mental file he'd started on the two newest members of his squad for later contemplation as he checked on the rest of their party before he turned his attention back to the forest around them. His attention would be drawn back to the group not long after that when Kirin spoke up to address them once more.

"Alright, after much consideration over the past handful of days, I have decided that we will break into two groups at this point. My squad will take the treaty on ahead to Konoha and brief the Hokage on the complications that cropped up towards the end of our mission while Squad Inu will escort Tora's little stray to the village."

Kakashi took the decision in stride as he'd expected the older man to split them up at some point shortly after he'd made the decision to bring the girl with them. It was a logical choice; since splitting them up coupled with their brief jaunt through the trees would further muddle their trail and make it harder for anyone tracking them to pick up any signs of their extra companion. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Tora silently take off the satchel he'd been diligently carrying for the past six days and pass it to Kirin without a word.

Kirin and his squad disappeared into the forest a moment later, leaving Inu and his squad alone with their little unplanned tag-a-long. Kakashi eyed his subordinates for a moment before he turned to the girl and asked, "Have you learned how to use chakra to enhance your body to allow you to jump greater distances than normal yet?"

"Hai, they taught us that in our second year at the academy."

"Do you think you have enough control to travel through the trees without falling?"

"I… I think so."

"Tora, you are to keep pace beside her at all times and monitor her progress so you can catch her before she falls if she falters at any point. Kuma, you are to travel directly beneath her in case she ends up slipping and Tora is unable to catch her before she falls. Taka, I want you to take point while I bring up the rear."

"Hai, teichou," all three individuals replied as they launched themselves up into the tree with Tora easily pulling the girl up with him.

Kakashi let them get a few seconds' head start before he followed after them. The rest of the afternoon would pass by rather quickly as they traveled through the trees at a slightly slower than normal pace so as not to push the girl too hard, too fast. The seventeen year old was rather impressed with how well the girl managed despite the fact that he suspected this was her first time ever traveling through the trees (if only because there were so few trees in or around Kumo). He also didn't miss the way the tree branches shifted and moved to accommodate the girl's shorter stride and he suspected that Tora was purposefully making her path easier to prevent accidents.

After a short internal debate, Kakashi decided not to call the teen out over the blatant waste of chakra unless he foolishly exhausted himself in his efforts to coddle the child. The boy had to know his limits fairly well if he'd been a shinobi for any length of time and if he thought he could afford to use it so casually, then who was Kakashi to stop him? The fact that he was doing it to ensure that the girl wouldn't cause further delays and decreased the chances of her getting injured actually made it a somewhat sensible move in this case.

They would stop just after sunset and Kakashi left the other three to set up camp while he circled the area to search for any signs that there was unwanted company of the two-legged variety in the area. After he was certain their chosen location was secure, he made his way back to camp; stopping only once to kill and collect a pair of pheasants that he'd spooked from their nest. He passed the birds to Tora who in turn passed one of them to Kuma before the two of them deftly stripped the pheasants of their feathers, gutted them, and removed their heads and feet.

As the two teens worked together to prepare supper, Kakashi took the time to study them a little more thoroughly as he allowed himself to truly ponder the mystery that surrounded the pair now that they were nearly home. He had learned far more about the two younger boys during the course of the mission than he had during the handful of training sessions they'd had together before the attempted Hyuuga Kidnapping.

For one thing, they behaved far more maturely than most other fifteen year olds and they rarely ever complained about anything. At least, not while on a mission. The playfulness he'd noted in both boys during their training sessions had mostly disappeared the moment they'd started the mission; bar those moments when it would not directly affect their mission. They also never hesitated to follow an order they were given and never protested about any of the less pleasant tasks they were assigned over the course of the mission.

All that really told him, though, was that the two of them took their duties as a shinobi seriously.

Another thing he'd learned was that both boys were not only familiar with Kirin but that the older captain trusted both teens implicitly; as displayed by his willingness to entrust their mission documents to the pair and the way he'd allowed the two of them to go off on their own in Kumo despite their relative inexperience when compared to the rest of the group. There was also no denying that the teens trusted Kirin just as much in return. On top of the mutual trust between the three, there was the obvious affection between them. To his chagrin, Kakashi hadn't even picked up on that until after Kirin had made the decision to bring the girl with them.

Part of that, he knew, was because the trio made an effort not to draw attention to their relationship coupled with the professional attitude all three had maintained for most of the mission. In fact, it wasn't until he'd seen Kirin interact with Tora after the group had learned that the teen had broken cover (slight as it was) that Kakashi picked up on the closeness the two shared that he knew would have had to extend to Kuma because of how close the two teens were. Seeing Kirin pull Tora into a hug had actually shocked Kakashi because Kirin had a reputation of being cold and calculating.

He'd been equally surprised that the teen had allowed the hug since he'd noticed the way that the teen went out of his way to avoid physically interacting with people outside of training unless it was unavoidable (Kuma being the only exception). Whatever it was that Kirin had whispered to the kid (in a voice far too low for Kakashi to pick up) had seen Tora immediately relaxing as well. It was a response that had Kakashi nearly one hundred percent certain that the two of them, or more correctly, that the three of them had known each other for years.

Kakashi shelved that line of thinking and turned to focus on the relationship between the two teens instead. He'd known that the two of them were close after reading through their truncated file when Kasai had decided to push them forward for Kakashi to take onto his team. What he hadn't realized was just how close the two were. Oh, Kasai had tried to tell him but mere words just didn't do justice to the bond that the two teens shared. More than once Kakashi wondered how it was possible for the two boys to not be romantically involved with one another given the intimacy they shared – and he wasn't referring to sexual intimacy.

They lived and breathed in perfect unison without any visible effort on their part. They held entire conversations with a single glance. They were hyper sensitive to each other's physical presence _and_ to each other's emotional state. Their collaborative fighting style was seamless and damn near flawless as demonstrated by their capture of Tora's little stalker that first night out of Kumo. And the two of them were very, very protective of each other.

It was a beautiful relationship and Kakashi pitied anyone that attempted to come between them. He also envied the pair their closeness as it cruelly showed him exactly what he could have had with Obito and Rin if he hadn't been such a fool when he was younger. He wanted to resent them for the way their closeness taunted him and ripped the thin scabs that had formed on the wounds his soul still bore from the losses of his first teammates and sensei. They made him yearn for the unattainable and the more time he spent around them the harder it was to ignore the growing desire inside of him.

And no, it was not a perverted desire. He just longed for meaningful companionship from a person that knew him so intimately that no words would be required between them unless they wished it.

Maito Gai had tried to be that person but the man's loudness grated on his nerves more often than not. That wasn't to say that Kakashi didn't consider Gai to be a good friend, he did; he just wasn't the other half of his soul in the way that Tora and Kuma were both halves of the same soul.

There were days when Kakashi feared that that person was Obito and that he'd missed his only chance for completeness.

Shaking away the maudlin direction his thoughts had taken, Kakashi once again focused on Tora and Kuma as the two of them rigged up a makeshift spit to roast the two pheasants on. This time he let his thoughts turn to what he'd learned of their skills over the course of the mission.

To start with, the two teens were both comfortable outdoors and used mundane survival skills as easily as they wielded ninjutsu. That told him that they were used to camping outdoors and most likely from a young age since their familiarity around a camp (regardless of the terrain or the weather) would have taken years to establish. Both boys could cook using both fresh ingredients or dried supplies, though Tora tended to do most of the cooking. Tora was also far more creative when he cooked – never cooking the same meal twice. Both boys were good trackers with Kuma being the better of the two. Kuma also appeared to be something of a sensor as he tended to be more aware of their surroundings than Tora.

Their stamina was also rather impressive, especially Tora's. Oh, they both had their limits, just like anyone else, but their limits were far greater than he had expected them to be. During their training sessions, Kakashi had done his best to drive both teens into the ground in order to find out just how much they could take but they always came back the next day without showing any signs that they'd been pushed beyond their endurance the previous day. That was doubly so for Tora. In fact, until he'd witnessed Tora truly pushing himself to exhaustion during the ten hour long roundup of internal threats after the Hyuuga Kidnapping, he had been wondering if Tora even had limits.

The kid did and there had been a brief moment when he feared the kid would keel over and die. Seeing the kid's internal healing ability just suddenly stop working had scared the shit out of Kakashi. Seeing a partially healed wound un-heal itself as the kid continued to fight and use his Mokuton was something that Kakashi never wanted to see again. Not only was it disturbing but it gave the impression that Tora had been making his condition worse by pulling his chakra away from his injuries just to keep fighting.

And despite how much worse the kid had looked in comparison to his own injuries, the little brat had still been released from the infirmary long before Kakashi had regained consciousness. It would have made no sense to Kakashi if he hadn't already known that both boys shared a healing Kekkei Genkai, though Kuma's ability was far weaker than Tora's.

That in itself was rather odd, according to what little he'd been allowed to see of their files, both boys shared quite a bit but there was no indication that they were actually related to one another. Sure, they considered themselves brothers but they were not actually listed as brothers or even cousins in their files. He couldn't yet say whether or not they shared any physical features (since he hadn't actually seen their faces) but if he had to hazard a guess, he would say the answer was a resounding no.

That answer was based upon what he could see of the two; their hair was different colors with different growth patterns and textures, their eyes were different shapes and colors, and their basic body builds were very different with Kuma being both taller and thinner than Tora.

Thinking about the two teens' physical differences soon had Kakashi thinking of the differences he'd noted in the way they used their Mokuton. Even the way they created their Moku Bunshin was different. Regardless of the variances that could be found in a Kekkei Genkai, the foundations of the Kekkei Genkai were always the same. You could always see the base form of the ability in any modified jutsu. And yet the only true similarity he'd seen to date between Kuma and Tora's Mokuton was the fact that they were both made up of the earth and water elements.

Based upon what he'd learned about the Shodai Hokage's famed Mokuton after he'd become a ward of the Sandaime Hokage, he knew that Kuma's Mokuton closely resembled the Shodai's Mokuton. Tora's Mokuton, on the other hand, was nothing at all like Senju Hashirama's Kekkei Genkai. He couldn't recall ever seeing Tora transform his chakra into wood; the green eyed teen always manipulating existing trees or parts of trees instead. Did that mean that Tora could not turn his chakra into wood or was it an indication that the gaki purposefully been holding back?

He supposed it could also be the kid's way of conserving chakra but that didn't really make sense because it was quite obvious that Tora's chakra reserves were at least three times larger than the average shinobi's chakra reserve. Kakashi thought the kid's reserves might even be close to twice the size of his own but it was hard to tell for certain due to how quickly the kid regenerated his chakra.

The only way Kakashi could think of to truly determine just how large Tora's reserves were when compared to his own was for the both of them to create as many Kage Bunshin as they could and count the difference. Kakashi was also certain that Kasai, Kirin, Kuma, and the Hokage would all kill him if he even suggested trying that method because of the risk it would pose to both of them. He may be more than a little socially inept and have a bit of a sadistic streak but he was not stupid and he could no longer be accused of being suicidal; Kasai and Yagi had beat that character flaw out of him before he finished his ANBU training.

Kakashi was drawn out of his musings at that point by a plate of roast pheasant being shoved under his nose and he glanced up to find Kuma standing over him with laughing brown eyes. It was almost as if the kid knew exactly what Kakashi had been thinking about for the last hour. Well, it wasn't as if Kakashi had made any attempt to hide the fact that he'd been observing the two so it wasn't inconceivable that both boys knew they'd caught his attention. With how observant both teens usually were (star-struck blonde waifs aside), Kakashi wouldn't be surprised to learn that they'd known he was trying to figure them out before the end of the first training session he'd put them through.

Kakashi accepted the proffered plate with a silent nod of thanks and dug into the food with relish. The seventeen year old couldn't remember the last time he'd been eaten so well on a mission. Well he could, if he really wanted to, but he was far too busy enjoying his current meal to bother summoning up the memories right that moment. He idly wondered if he could smuggle Tora home with him so he could keep the younger teen as his personal chef; it would certainly be a huge improvement over eating his own cooking all the time. He immediately dropped that line of thinking when he realized that kidnapping Tora would likely see him on the receiving end of some seriously humiliating pranks from both teens.

That made him wonder if those two brats were responsible for the odd splinters he kept sitting on since the day the two of them had been officially assigned to his team. He hadn't forgotten Tora's petulant threat after the first time he'd called the teen by the nickname the contrary otter he'd summoned had called him. It was that memory that led him to believe that yes, those two were responsible for the splinters he'd needed to dig out of his butt each time he sat down in a chair for the week following their placement on his team.

As he chewed on another bite of roast pheasant, Kakashi began plotting just how he would get the two teens back for the unwarranted (at least in his mind) splinter pranks coupled with Tora's repeated feminine role casting with his undercover disguises while they were in Kumo. A sadistic smile curled the corners of Kakashi's hidden mouth as he came up with the perfect prank. What made it even better was the fact that he could play it off as training. Yep, he was going to enjoy getting them back as soon as they got back to the village.

Kakashi spent the rest of the evening revising his plans for revenge and watching over their camp.

Bright and early the next morning, the five of them continued on their way towards Konoha after a cold breakfast of leftover pheasant and dried fruit. Unlike the previous six days of travel, the group would stop for lunch around noon in order to give the girl a chance to rest since she was not used to traveling through the trees for such a long distance at their current pace (which was still about half the speed that they would normally travel). Kakashi couldn't help but note that she was holding up far better than most Genin would under the same circumstances.

He was also beginning to suspect that there was more to the child than what she had told them. To start with, while it was obvious that the girl was tired she was no where near exhausted. There was also the fact that her chakra reserves had not dropped in the slightest, leading him to believe that she was actually suppressing her chakra in order to hide her presence. He just couldn't tell if it was an instinctive habit born of necessity (to avoid being noticed by those that might harm her) or if it was something she had been taught and used to her advantage (to make her seem less of a threat).

She was also far too aware of Tora's presence; she never stopped watching the teen and she never missed an opportunity to initiate physical contact.

He knew that part of that could be attributed to the fact that it had been Tora who had rescued her from her attackers but he also knew that wasn't the only reason she was drawn to the boy. He just didn't know what other reason she could possibly have for being so drawn to the boy, at least none that didn't have negative connotations, and he only prayed that it hadn't been a mistake to bring the girl along. He was at least thankful that both teens appeared to be fully aware of the extra attention that the girl was giving to the green eyed teen.

Kakashi resolved to keep a close eye on the girl in case she had been sent to spy on Konoha and intended to use Tora in order to do so. He also didn't dismiss the possibility that someone else had recognized the teen's eyes from some earlier encounter and that the girl had been sent to gather information specifically on Tora. While most people would scoff at the idea that someone would target a seemingly unknown and uninteresting teen, Kakashi knew that Tora was far more special than most people knew.

His Mokuton or his purported Hyouton (which Kakashi had yet to see the kid use) alone would be enough to gain the interest of even the least powerful village leader. Couple those two bloodlines with his insane regenerative abilities and even the covert organizations would be drooling at a chance to recruit the kid or at the bare minimum steal him for a breeding project in the hopes of producing viable offspring with his Kekkei Genkai that could be trained up as powerful little weapons. If those attempts failed, those same people would do everything in their power to kill the kid to keep others from gaining his power. The same could be said for Kuma as well.

Part of Kakashi wanted to curse or kill Kasai for ever manipulating him into taking those two onto his team due to the headache they were quickly turning out to be. Actually, it wasn't the two boys that drove him up the wall (though their splinters certainly hadn't done him any favors), it was the charge that Kasai had given him to continue to protect the two teens from their unnamed enemy and the rest of the world. He apparently hadn't been too far off the mark when he'd called taking those two onto his team a glorified babysitting job.

Admittedly, their skills almost made up for the headaches they brought with them; the key word being almost. Since their shared Kekkei Genkai was turning out to be a pain in his ass. Quite literally too, if one took into account the high number of splinters he'd had to dig out of his backside since July thirty-first. At least he could look forward to seeing the look on their faces when he threw them to the wolves for a little extra training once they returned to the village. Or rather, the look in their eyes since he doubted the pair planned on taking their masks off in his presence any time soon.

The group would reach Konoha just as the sun was setting that evening and Kakashi ordered Tora to blindfold the girl the moment they saw the walls rising up out of the forest. Kakashi then led the group around to one of the secret ANBU entrances in order to avoid the Chuunin guards on duty at the main entrance. Once they were inside of the village and the passage way sealed once more, Kakashi silently signaled for Tora to remove the blindfold. The seventeen year old then carefully observed the look on the girl's face as she got her first look at Konoha.

When he saw nothing but awe and excitement in her eyes, he felt a little bit better about the decision to bring her along as he doubted a spy would look at another village with anything but a calculating or wary gaze. Of course, there was always the possibility that the girl had been a very well trained actress but he couldn't smell or see any of the telltale signs that the girl's emotions were anything other than genuine. Kakashi let her have another full minute to take in the sprawling village below them before he hustled his squad through the backdoor of the ANBU Facility.

Eight minutes later, the five of them stepped into Kasai's office and the masked man's head snapped up to eye them intently; his eyes lingering on Kuma and Tora before zeroing in on to the only unknown in the group.

Kasai then snorted as his eyes flicked between Tora and the girl before he drawled, "Glad to see that you made it back in one piece, Squad Inu. Inu-teichou and Taka, the two of you are free to go; you can turn in your mission reports and schedule a debriefing first thing tomorrow morning. Kuma, you are to take Tora's little stray to Supply and requisition her a couple changes of clothes before setting her up in Tora's room so she can make herself presentable. Tora, you will stay right where you are; you and I need to have a serious talk."

Kakashi watched Tora wilt in response to Kasai's declaration that they needed to talk before he turned and walked out of the office. He briefly considered tagging along with Kuma and the girl before he decided that his time would be better spent writing up his report. There would be plenty of time later to observe his new subordinates and their little stray.

* * *

**Translations:** Japanese to English

Gaki – brat

* * *

**11-15-15:** _Minor edits made to chapter to fix spelling/grammar mistakes and removed unnecessary author's notes._


	25. The Confession

**Disclaimer:** _All HP characters are the property of JKR, the WB, and respective publishing companies and all Naruto characters are the property of Masashi Kishimoto. This is nothing more than a simple FanFiction that I have written. I have made no money from this or any of the other stories I have posted on this or other sites._

**Warnings:** _Mild to moderate violence, character death, alternate universe (i.e. kiss canon goodbye), OCC behaviors and personalities, a number of original characters and obscure canon characters to flesh out family trees, random chosen last names to give a number of characters surnames, and who knows what else._

**AN:** _This story is self-beta'd; so there may be occasional grammatical or spelling errors that crop up every now and then and for those I apologize in advance._

* * *

Chapter Twenty-Five: The Confession

_October 11, 0295 AtD, 9:22 AM  
Konohagakure no Sato, Hi no Kuni_

Eleven year old Ni'i Yugito tried to ignore the fear that was tangling her insides into knots as she followed her masked savior down the stairs leading into Konoha from the top of the Hokage Mountain. She wasn't stupid, she knew that her very presence in Konoha was going to cause huge problems and that her deflection from Kumo would have hundreds of negative political ramifications. She also knew that she couldn't have stayed in Kumo one minute longer; not without sacrificing far more than she was willing to give to the village that hated her almost as much as they hated Kiraa Bii. She had tried for years now but she could not ignore their hatred and their insults the way the older man could.

Yugito knew full well why she was hated. It was the same reason that Kiraa Bii was hated too. They were both hosts to one of the nine bijuu. Specifically, she was the host of the Nibi while Bii was the host of the Hachibi. The moment she had been deemed old enough to understand the concept of fuuinjutsu (shortly before her eighth birthday), she had been told the truth about the demon that had been sealed into her on her second birthday.

Yugito had been mostly resigned to her fate as a village pariah by the time she was admitted into the academy not long after her eighth birthday and learning about the burden she carried. At the same time, she had firmly believed that she could one day earn respect from her fellow shinobi, if not from the civilians. After all, Bii was both respected and feared on top of being hated and reviled. Unfortunately, there was a huge difference between the two of them; Yugito was a girl.

Women, while not exactly looked down on, were not exactly respected in the same way as men were in Kumo; kunoichi even less so, since most civilians believed kunoichi to be women of loose morals. There were a handful of kunoichi that had earned respect but that was mostly because they had gained the notice of a powerful shinobi. That was particularly true of those kunoichi that earned the notice of the Raikage. Yugito had not enjoyed having the Raikage's attention on her because when the Yondaime Raikage looked at her, he saw her as a weapon rather than as a person.

And weapons were designed to be used and discarded (something she had learned fairly quickly).

Still, Yugito had thought that if she did her best, she would be acknowledged. And so she had put forth her best efforts in the Academy; she had pushed her body to its limits and studied every text book and scroll she could get her hands on in her free time. All she had done was further alienate herself from her peers though and maintaining the top grade in her class had only made her instructors eye her with suspicion as they automatically assumed that the bijuu was responsible.

Things only got worse on her tenth birthday when the Raikage decided that it was time for her to start learning how to harness the Nibi's power. That was also the day that she'd had a Limiter Seal inscribed in the middle of her back between her shoulder blades. The only time the seal was deactivated was during her nightly training sessions because her trainers feared she would unleash the bijuu's power within the village now that she was learning how to use it. The rest of the time, the seal cut her off from all but the barest trickle of her chakra and completely cut her off from the bijuu's chakra bar what chakra the Containment Seal siphoned from the bijuu and fed into her coils.

That seal was part of the reason that the two pedophiles had managed to catch her on her way to the Academy that fateful morning. If not for the Limiter Seal, she would not have had any problems fighting back or escaping despite being outnumbered two to one. Just thinking about those two men made Yugito sick to her stomach as she felt the phantom touch of their hands on her body once more.

A brief mental nudge from the bijuu inside of her drew her back to the present and Yugito immediately glanced at the young man walking beside her. The Nibi nudged her again until she took the smallest step closer to her savior. A rumbled purr seemed to echo through her soul in response to her proximity to the green eyed shinobi beside her and she wondered again what it was about the boy that the Nibi found so fascinating. It was actually the Nibi's prompting that had seen her leaving the only home she'd known.

The instant that the teen had first approached her, the Nibi had sat up and taken notice of the boy.

From the moment that Yugito had first come into contact with the demon inside of her, Yugito had known nothing but the Nibi's rage coupled with a caustic tongue. The demon had hated her with a passion because she was nothing but an unwanted prison in the eyes of the Nibi. Each time that she had made contact with the beast during her nightly training sessions over the past year, the Nibi would (without fail) insult everything about her, threaten her and the village, and fight her for control.

So she was understandably shaken when nearly all of the two-tailed cat's violent rage had vanished without any warning the moment her eyes had looked into the deep, green eyes of her savior for the first time. Looking into the teen's eyes had been like stepping out of a hot spring and jumping into a pool of ice water; shocking and exhilarating all at once.

Yugito hadn't known what to think at the time and the Nibi's behavior had been both frightening and confusing because the bijuu had been urging her to trust the teen. And while Kiraa Bii had told her that she would have to learn to trust her bijuu if she ever hoped to create a working partnership with it, the sudden change in the demon's attitude had not inspired trust. The teen, however, had. His low, quiet voice and his gentleness had calmed both her and the Nibi and the sincerity she'd seen in his eyes had touched her deeply.

His words had touched her just as deeply. The fact that he had called himself a friend when they had never even met before and that he'd claimed his only desire was to help her had appealed to the innocent little girl that surprisingly still lived inside of her. She had so wanted to believe him and at the same time that desire had frightened the hell out of her. It had made her feel vulnerable. That was part of the reason she'd been so confrontational at the time.

The fact that he had not ridiculed her for allowing herself to be caught by two civilians had been rather surprising. As had the words of wisdom that he'd imparted to her the moment she'd blurted out her insecurities. She could clearly recall those words even now…

"_There will always be others out there that are stronger than you but that doesn't mean that you aren't strong as well. It just means that you have to keep training and keep improving so that you continue to grow stronger."_

She hadn't understood what he meant at the time. She'd been too startled by the loud rumbling purr that the Nibi had let loose the moment the teen had touched her for the first time. It had been the Nibi's unpredictable reaction that had prevented her from slapping the teen's hand away from her face out of habit since touch usually equated pain in her mind. Once she had finally realized that he was touching her, his gentle ministrations had been such a stark contrast to the bruising touches of her attackers that she'd not even attempted to interfere at that point.

The moment he had finished and moved back out of her personal space, Yugito had felt an urge to run away as far and as fast as she could in order to escape the confusing and conflicting feelings he invoked.

Only the Nibi had had other plans; plans that didn't involve running away from her green eyed savior.

Yugito had tried to ignore the two-tailed cat at first but the bijuu had been insistent. She knew she was weak for giving into the Nibi's demands but she couldn't deny that she was just as curious about the boy that had protected her. So, she had made a quick side trip to her boxy little apartment to grab her survival kit before she hurried back to the alley where she'd been attacked so that she could track down her savior and his companion.

She had thought it rather odd that they had loitered outside of the Library until it opened. She had only grown more confused when she'd watched the librarian lead the pair towards the section that held the comic books since in her limited experience, the only thing boys their age were interested in were flashy jutsu. And she could have sworn that the two of them were either Genin that had taken off their hitai-ate for some reason or Academy students that were slated for graduation soon because of the way they carried themselves and how easily the one boy had taken down her attackers.

Watching them that first day had her wondering if they weren't actually civilians or maybe Academy dropouts. That belief had disappeared the instant she'd watched them walk through a rock cliff as if it wasn't there. She'd even snuck up to the cliff and pressed her hands against the wall to confirm that it wasn't just a genjutsu covering a tunnel or something. The Nibi had even deigned to inform her that there were no barriers protecting the outside of the wall and that it could sense the chakra of the green eyed teen and his companion within the wall.

The true shock hadn't come until she'd followed the pair back to the Foreign Quarter because she had been one hundred percent certain that they had been natives to Kumo or that they were citizens from one of Kumo's closest neighboring villages.

She had stopped fighting the Nibi's persistence in keeping an eye on the pair at that point and determinedly watched both their unconventional entrance point and the main entrance to the hotel that they had led her to. Seeing two completely different boys exit just a few hours later had confused Yugito until the Nibi had told her that they were in fact the same two boys the moment she had gotten close enough for the Nibi's limited ability to sense chakra through the Limiter Seal to pick up their signature.

That knowledge also told the eleven year old that the two boys were at least Chuunin level shinobi and that they were far more skilled than she had originally believed. It also didn't take her long to realize that they were not Kumo shinobi. They were paying too close attention to the layout of the village, visiting too many key locations, and listening too closely to the conversations and rumors floating around the village to actually be natives. The one thought that had run through her mind at the time was; how the hell had no one else noticed two foreign spies wandering the village freely?

She got a partial answer when she eavesdropped on a pair of Jounin on October third after following the two teens to their hidden base. The only foreign shinobi currently staying at the hotel was the group from Konoha that had shown up at the end of August and according to the two Jounin she had listened to, the only time any of the Konoha shinobi left the hotel was when they were escorted to see the Raikage. That meant that the two teens had managed to fool their guards.

It was also a confirmation that they weren't just mere Chuunin either. It took some serious training to fool the veteran shinobi that stood watch over the more dangerous guests staying in the Foreign Quarter.

Shortly after learning that her savior was from Konoha, her unsuspecting information sources had gone on to mention that the Raikage was kicking the Konoha shinobi out of the village because of some emergency that had cropped up. It hadn't taken Yugito very long to realize that the emergency most likely revolved around her. She had, after all, ditched both her Academy lessons and her evening training sessions every single day since she'd run into the pair (something she'd never done before). She'd also ditched her handler again; something that had also attributed to her getting caught by those two civilians that day.

She hated her handler though. The guy was a complete and utter ass. He was also a pervert. She couldn't count the times the man had purposefully walked in on her while she was in the shower after a training session. He had often gloated about how he was the one that had been selected to 'cure' her of her virginity the moment she had her first menstrual cycle (an act that all kunoichi were ordered to go through the moment they began menstruating due to the high chances of being raped if caught by the enemy while on a mission).

Thankfully, the guy was an idiot as well, since he'd never once noticed that she regularly ditched him every twenty-eight days in order to keep him from learning that she had started menstruating shortly after her tenth birthday.

Upon learning she was a host, Yugito had learned everything she could about what she could expect as a host. One of the first things she learned was that bijuu containers unfailingly developed at an earlier age; especially females. One reason for that were the unnaturally large chakra reserves that all Jinchuuriki gained due to the demon's chakra mingling with their own to some degree (the amount varying based upon the Containment Seal used). Another was because of the direct (if limited) influence that the demons had on their host's physical body on top of the mental influence they could exert.

The reason that it affected female hosts more so than male hosts was because of an inherent weakness in all Containment Seals that could be readily exploited by the sealed demon during pregnancy. The explanation she had found on why that specific weakness was only present in female hosts had to do with the seal's basic function, the purpose of a woman's body, and the nature of a pregnancy. The seal was designed to keep an entity contained within its host while a woman's body was designed to bring forth new life that would be expelled at the end of her pregnancy.

What that basically boiled down to was that at the precise moment of birth, the woman's body and the seal were in direct conflict; allowing for the demon to potentially force its way out.

Kumo's solution to that sticky problem was to render any female hosts sterile the moment they finished going through puberty or upon reaching their fifteenth birthday (whichever came first) in order to make certain that she would never become pregnant and therefore endanger the village. She was certain they would do it far sooner if it wasn't for the fact that doing so could potentially create future problems and stunt the host's growth.

Yugito wasn't certain just how she felt about the matter because she wasn't really sure whether or not she wanted children. It's not like she had any experience with babies or children in general either because no one had ever trusted her enough to let her get close to any child (her classes had been the only exception and the other kids had avoided her like the plague anyway).

Yugito shook away those useless thoughts before she focused again on the decision that had brought her to Konoha.

After learning that her savior, whom she was ninety-nine-point-nine percent certain was one of the Konoha shinobi, would be leaving the village, Yugito had had a small panic attack. She feared she would be left open to another attack the moment her green-eyed protector left the village. It had not taken much for the Nibi to persuade her to leave the village with her savior at that point. The presence of her attackers loitering outside of her apartment building when she'd gone home to collect the rest of her things right after the Jounin she had been listening to had gone back to work had only firmed up her resolve.

Knowing that there would be far too many eyes on the Konoha shinobi when they left the village, Yugito had chosen to sneak out that night and wait for them at the base of the main road. It had actually been pathetically easy to sneak passed the guards; all she'd had to do was swim across the lake and slip down one of the hidden supply trails that the village used and maintained to prevent an enemy from successfully besieging the village during times of war. It had then taken her the rest of the night to reach the base of the mountain and find a secure hiding place in which to wait.

The journey alone down the mountain in the middle of the night had been nerve wracking. The unnerving journey had been well worth it though; especially once she learned that the Konoha shinobi had been escorted from a distance by a squad of Jounin; she'd have been easily caught if she'd tried to tail either group down the mountain due to the limited cover for her to hide behind. She'd half feared that the Kumo Jounin would trail the Konoha delegation all the way to Kaminari's border but they thankfully returned to the village once they'd seen the Konoha group off the mountain.

Keeping pace with the Konoha shinobi from that point forward had been rather difficult because of how fast they had traveled once they were off the mountain and if not for the Nibi's ability to trace chakra signatures (much like a dog tracked scents) she probably would have lost them fairly quickly. Each time she thought she couldn't go any further, the Nibi would coax and egg her on; the two-tailed cat utterly determined to stay close to the green-eyed teen. She had nearly cried tears of relief when the eight of them had stopped for the night.

She'd then stupidly allowed herself to grow careless in her exhaustion. It didn't help that Nibi was still so focused on her savior that it kept urging her to get closer to him. She'd been completely caught off guard by the two teens fighting out of the blue the way they had and thought they would never notice her creeping closer if they were so focused on one another. Part of her had been completely unsurprised that they'd caught her so quickly the moment she'd gotten within ten yards of their camp; she'd known they were skilled after learning they'd fooled seasoned Jounin for over a month.

On the other hand, she'd been terrified at the end of the scuffle when she ended up with a sword point practically in her eye while a kunai pricked the skin over her heart. To make matters worse, the damned Nibi had started purring like crazy again because she had ended up in the arms of the green eyed teen. She had heard her savior threaten her but his words hadn't really registered in her mind simply because the demon inside of her had only gotten louder the longer the boy held her. Oh how the Nibi had railed and wailed the moment contact had been broken.

It had been the Nibi's incessant caterwauling that had prompted Yugito to beg her savior to take her away.

The rest of that first night had been a nightmare as the adults in the party had been dead set against allowing her to go with them. There was also no doubt that they had been irritated with both her and the two teens. Her emotions had been all over the place as she was briefly interrogated by the apparent leader of the group, listened to the leader and what must have been the second in command grill the two teens over the incident, and heard the leader decide that she couldn't go with them. The Nibi's rage had returned in a heartbeat in response to that refusal.

It had been the Nibi's renewed rage that had prompted her to declare that she would follow them no matter what. The Nibi had stilled the moment her death had been offered up as a solution. In Yugito's mind, death would have been preferable to being forced to return to the village at that point and neither she nor the Nibi had missed the way the green eyed teen's chakra had faltered the moment she had calmly stated she would welcome death. It had been a shock when the leader had changed his mind about letting her go with them immediately after her proclamation and then promptly dumped her in the lap of her savior as the teen was assigned to be her new handler.

She hadn't been able to control her emotions as the tension left her body and to her everlasting mortification, she'd cried herself to sleep in her savior's arms. She half expected to be teased about that after he'd woken her up but he hadn't said a single word about it. The rest of that first night was a blur in her mind. The only thing she clearly recalled was waking up in the middle of the night that first night and discovering that her savior was half frozen. She had originally planned to just make the other boy share his blanket until the Nibi reminded her that sharing body heat was a far more effective method for warming someone up.

That had led her to curl up against the teen and share her borrowed sleeping bag.

She had been shocked and worried when she'd first snuggled up against his ice cold body before she realized that he probably only felt so cold to her because her body temperature tended to run hotter than the average human temperature because of the Nibi's presence. Once she got used to the differences in their temperatures, it actually felt rather nice to curl up against the teen. She was certain that the Nibi was far more pleased by the boy's proximity than she was though; if the cat's incessant purring at the time had been anything to go by.

At least the Nibi hadn't felt the need to torment her dreams that night.

The method of travel that had been chosen for her had been unpleasant, to say the least. Traveling through the ground for hours at a time was disorienting and annoying. Neither she nor the Nibi had enjoyed the experience at all. Although, the times when it was the green eyed teen carrying her were slightly less annoying because she hadn't had to listen to the Nibi complain about the separation on top of the discomfort. She'd started to grow claustrophobic after the first two days though and by the time they'd finally let her up for fresh air, Yugito had started to fear she'd never see the sky again.

She felt so mortified when most of the Konoha shinobi laughed at her reaction to being above ground but she was at least thankful that her savior, his brother, and the leader hadn't laughed at her as well. She was vindictively pleased that the grown men that had laughed her had had trouble being dragged through the trees after that. Of course, her pleasure over their discomfort had been marred by the fact that she'd thrown up at the time. At least no one had laughed at her further because of that.

After the horrible experience that was traveling through a tree, Yugito had finally learned the name of her savior and she had been completely shocked to learn that his name was Tora, of all things. At least he claimed it was. The Nibi couldn't detect any lie but at the same time she knew there was something that Tora hadn't been telling her. The oddest thing, in her mind, was how well the name Tora fit her savior. He was confident and graceful like a tiger and she knew he was just as dangerous. Even his startling green eyes were cat-like in both color and intensity.

There had been times when her breath had caught in her throat whenever she caught his gaze. When he'd met her gaze after she had demanded to know whether or not Tora was his real name, Yugito had actually felt like a cornered mouse as those vibrant verdant eyes pierced straight through her to measure her very soul. She could have sworn she'd even felt the Nibi quake beneath that penetrating gaze. In fact, the Nibi hadn't spoken to her once since that moment. Not even to complain when she'd ended up spending the previous night alone in the small combination bedroom and bathroom she'd been led to by Tora's brother Kuma.

Part of that might have been the fact that the room she'd been given to use was Tora's room though.

His scent had been all over that room but it had been strongest on the strange bed that looked as if it had grown right out of the wall. She had half feared the bed would fall if she climbed up into it but she was rather surprised to find it both sturdy and comfortable. So comfortable, in fact, that she hadn't wanted to get out of bed this morning.

That was when she learned that Tora had a bit of a sadistic streak; the jerk had drenched her with ice water to get her up and moving. He'd then threatened to take her to see the Hokage looking like a half drowned rat if she didn't hurry up and get herself cleaned up and dressed in dry clothes. She'd tried to kick him in the shin in retaliation but he'd easily dodged her foot with a soft laugh before he'd disappeared through the door. She would have tried kicking him again after Kuma let her out of the room but Tora's teichou, Inu, had been waiting alongside of the two teens.

Yugito felt uneasy around the gray haired man; not only had he been the one to suggest killing her rather than allow her to go with them or follow them but the man smelled strongly of electricity and dog. Dogs did not like her and she did not like dogs. Part of that was because of the Nibi and the rest was because there had been more than one villager that had set their dogs on her when she'd been younger. The Nibi wasn't particularly fond of dogs either. Nor was the cat fond of electricity due to the high number of raiton users there were in Kumo.

Tora, on the other hand, smelled strongly of ice and trees with a hint of fish, salt, and wet fur. Oddly enough, Kuma smelled nearly identical to Tora with the exception that he smelled strongly of dirt and fresh sawdust instead of ice and trees. It wasn't too surprising, given the fact that they were brothers from what she understood, but it was odd that their scents were so close when most other sibling pairs she'd met in the past only had a vague sense of similarity to them and that was mostly because they both usually carried the scent of their parents.

The only time she'd ever encountered a couple whose scents were so closely matched had been those couples that were lovers. Old married couples frequently smelled so strongly of one another that it was hard to determine where one person's scent started and the other ended. Yet she knew that that was not the case with the two teens, if only because the scents were not intermingled, they were just very similar.

Yugito's musings were interrupted at that point as their small group came to stop in front of a pair of doors and Inu reached out to knock sharply on them before he opened the leftmost door. Inu entered the room first before Tora prodded Yugito into moving forward next while he and Kuma both followed practically right on her heels. Yugito nearly tripped over her feet when her eyes landed on the man she knew was the Sandaime Hokage based upon the pictures she had seen in the Academy's history books.

The eleven year old kunoichi in training nearly peed her pants when the aged shinobi turned his shrewd and calculating eyes in her direction. The only reason she didn't was because of the comforting hand on her back that was gently steering her deeper into the room. In an effort to calm her nerves, Yugito tore her eyes from the Hokage and glanced at the other men that were standing off to either side of the Hokage's desk. There was the flame masked man from the night before, a man with a couple of facial scars and dark hair shaped like a pineapple, a man with blue eyes and long blond hair, and a bear of a man with a long scar across his face, a bandana over his head, and a permanent scowl on his face.

Looking at them wasn't much different than looking at the Hokage and their eyes were just as cold and just as calculating. Not even the lazy slouch the pineapple haired man had affected could hide the coiled power she could feel radiating from him. This time, Yugito stopped moving all together and actually took a single step backwards only to collide with Tora's chest.

"You have nothing to fear, youjiyo," Tora murmured lowly as both of his hands landed on her shoulder, "so long as you do not lie and so long as you have no intentions to harm Konoha or her people, then I can promise you that no harm shall come to you from _any_ of those in this room. Okay…?"

Yugito gave a jerky nod in reply as she allowed Tora to give her a gentle push to get her walking once more despite the fact that her legs still felt like jelly. It was another two steps before she realized that Tora had once again called her a little girl and before she could censor her mouth or her body, she jabbed the teen in the gut with her right elbow and imperiously ordered, "Stop calling me that! I have a name, you know."

"You have sharp elbows too, gaki," Tora replied as he poked her in the side with his left hand. "And it's not like you told us your name, so what else am I supposed to call you, youjiyo?"

"I tried to tell you my name before and you said not to," Yugito pointed out as she scraped the heel of her left foot down his unprotected shin before stomping on his foot.

"There was no one stopping you from giving us your name once you learned our names," Kuma countered as he deftly lifted her up and planted her in the center of the room. "Now stop attacking Tora; it's rude and unwise to pick fights in front of the Hokage. Even if Tora was intentionally teasing you in order to help you relax a bit."

Yugito eeped and blushed bright red as she realized she'd been attacking one of Konoha's shinobi _in front of_ the Hokage. To her surprise, most of the adults in the room were actually chuckling instead of glowering or glaring at her (bar the masked man whose face she couldn't really see and the bear man whose face she suspected might be made of stone).

"Fear not, child," the Hokage stated in a surprisingly friendly tone. "Tora tends to draw that kind of reaction from most of the people that have to put up with him." Yugito couldn't help but giggle as she snuck a glance back at her savior to find that he'd crossed his arms over his chest like a petulant child. "Perhaps, it would be best if you were to introduce yourself to us if you wish to be addressed by your name."

Yugito bit her lip as her insecurities came rushing back at that point. It wasn't until she felt the Nibi stirring in the back of her mind that she drew up her courage and complied, "My name is Ni'i Yugito."

The eleven year old knew that her name had been recognized by more than one of the adults present as the room was suddenly filled with an uncomfortable stillness and the tension that had disappeared after her bickering with Tora had returned twofold. She trembled briefly before she squared her shoulders, lifted her chin, and bravely met the Hokage's gaze as she desperately ignored the way her stomach was twisting up in knots once more.

"You are related to the Shodai Raikage," the Hokage stated with certainty.

"Hai, I'm the Shodai's great-granddaughter," Yugito confirmed as her voice wavered only the slightest bit.

"I see," the Hokage drawled in a measured tone as he leaned forward to rest his elbows on his desk as he steepled his hands and tapped his index fingers against his lips. "And yet you claimed that the entirety of Kumogakure hated you."

"They do. They always have for as long as I can remember."

"And do you know why they supposedly hated the honored granddaughter of their Shodai Raikage?" pineapple hair man asked her as he shed all traces of laziness.

"H…Hai," Yugito stuttered in reply as she cast a fearful glance back and up to meet the verdant gaze of her savior.

"And their reason was…?" the Hokage prompted when she didn't immediately say anything further.

Yugito dropped her gaze to her hands as she knotted them together to keep them from trembling and desperately tried not to puke on the Hokage's floor. She then snuck one last glance at Tora before she took a seep breath, glanced back up at the Hokage, and weakly answered, "I'm the Jinchuuriki of the Nibi."

Several curses rang out through the room and the Hokage actually buried his face in his hands. Yugito tasted bile as her fears began pressing down around her over their reaction to her confession. Her knees buckled on her a moment later as she began having trouble breathing but to her surprise she found herself being swept up into a pair of strong arms before she could hit the ground. The familiar scent of ice and trees told her that it was Tora who was holding her and part of her was thrilled to know that he wasn't afraid to touch her even though he now knew what she was.

"Maa, maa, youjiyo; you have nothing to fear," Tora murmured in her ear as he held her close.

"Tora…!" the masked man snapped at that point as he took a single step towards them and Yugito couldn't help but flinch at the anger she could hear in his voice and sense in the air around him.

"Oi, don't blame me for this one," Tora snapped back without any trace of fear and more than a little irritation. "I'm not the one that was in charge of interrogating my little stalker after we caught her. Even if I had known exactly who she was and what she held, I still would have stepped in to help her. You know damned well how I feel about people abusing children."

"I'm getting too old for this shit," the Hokage muttered as he rubbed his hands over his face before he looked up once more. "Ni'i-chan, why were you following one of my ANBU Guards?"

"He saved me from the two men that were going to rape me," Yugito replied honestly as she looked up to meet his gaze through the shimmering sheen of unshed tears that had filled her eyes. "He treated me with kindness and he saw me as a person instead of a monster. And… and…"

"And what, child?" the bear man gently asked in a deep voice that was far kinder than she would have expected from him given his intimidating visage.

"And the Nibi is drawn to him."

* * *

**Translations:** Japanese to English

Gaki – brat  
Hai – yes  
Kiraa Bii – Killer Bee  
Maa, maa – now, now or there, there (a phrase used to placate someone)  
Oi – hey  
Youjiyo – little girl

**Notes: **

Kiraa Bii vs. Kirābi vs. Killer Bee – the spelling of Killer Bee's name was taken from rather than Narutopedia and I use that version of his name because it is the easiest version for me to write outside of just using Killer Bee which I try to avoid for authenticity's sake much like I use Maito Gai instead of Might Guy. There's also the fact that MS Word has an issue using with me using ā instead of a or aa and I get sick of constantly having any word using the line over the vowel popping up as a spelling mistake when I know its not.

I also dislike using a single letter to represent a name. That is especially true of the Raikage's name because it is far too easy to mix his name up with the letter a when starting a sentence or writing out his dialog It was for that reason that I never once used the Raikage's name during the chapters that the Konoha shinobi spent in Kumo. It was also why I didn't write out the confrontation between Kirin and the Raikage and didn't send Kojimaru, Tenzou, or Kakashi to the meeting. Anyway, that is my reasoning behind the spelling I used for certain names.

Yugito's age – as I mentioned back when she first was introduced in this story, yes, I am aware that in canon, Yugito is the same age as Kakashi (which in this story would have placed her as two years older than both Kojimaru &amp; Tenzou). I reduced her age by six years intentionally because I have plans for her that required her to be young enough to; not yet have earned her hitai-ate, to still be resentful of her treatment at the hands of a village that knows she carries the Nibi (which means that her loyalty to Kumo is not as steadfast as it is when she is older – therefore making it easier to move her to another village), and for one other reason that won't come up until later.

* * *

**11-15-15:** _Minor edits made to chapter to fix spelling/grammar mistakes and removed unnecessary author's notes._


	26. The Explanation

**Disclaimer:** _All HP characters are the property of JKR, the WB, and respective publishing companies and all Naruto characters are the property of Masashi Kishimoto. This is nothing more than a simple FanFiction that I have written. I have made no money from this or any of the other stories I have posted on this or other sites._

**Warnings:** _Mild to moderate violence, character death, alternate universe (i.e. kiss canon goodbye), OCC behaviors and personalities, a number of original characters and obscure canon characters to flesh out family trees, random chosen last names to give a number of characters surnames, and who knows what else._

**AN:** _This story is self-beta'd; so there may be occasional grammatical or spelling errors that crop up every now and then and for those I apologize in advance._

* * *

Chapter Twenty-Six: The Explanation

_October 11, 0295 AtD, 9:57 AM  
Konohagakure no Sato, Hi no Kuni_

Kojimaru fell completely still and stopped breathing as Yugito's last words echoed round his brain while beside him Inu sucked in a sharp breath of shock. He felt Tenzou grab hold of his left elbow in order to ground him in the here and now and he slowly let out the breath he'd been holding before he gingerly sucked in a new breath. At the same time, he glanced down at Yugito as he automatically pulled the girl closer to him when he subconsciously registered the fact that she was trembling in fear.

"Child, what do you mean when you said that the Nibi is drawn to him?" Shikaku inquired as the older man's brow furrowed in confusion.

"I… it…," Yugito attempted before she faltered and fell silent. After a moment she half twisted in Kojimaru's arms and tilted her head up to meet his gaze before she began once more; the girl speaking to him and him alone – her words slow and measured as she obviously struggled to explain, "When I was forced into contact with the Nibi as part of the new training I started on my tenth birthday, the first thing that I noticed about the bijuu (aside from its size) was the endless well of hate and rage that the bijuu felt for the world and most especially for me and for Kumo. Every single night for the last year I was forced to face the Nibi again and again to try and make friends with it as I had been ordered to."

"The Nibi resented me too much though and I hated listening to it tell me how much it hated me and the village even as it insulted me and threatened me and those around me. I hated the way it would sometimes whisper in my dreams after that first meeting and turn even the happiest dreams into my worst nightmares just so that it could torment me every time I closed my eyes. And still my trainer forced me to confront the bijuu with instructions to try harder. Those sessions only grew worse when my trainer demanded that I start channeling the Nibi's chakra in order to get used to the feel of the demonic chakra after the first six months passed without any signs of improvement."

Yugito took a single shaky breath and shivered a moment though her gaze never wavered as she continued to focus solely on Kojimaru while she continued her explanation, "I didn't think there was anything that could ever tame the Nibi's rage but the moment you first approached me and I looked into your eyes, the Nibi calmed down. The abrupt absence of hostility was shocking; like jumping into a pool of ice water after spending hours soaking in a hot spring. It confused and frightened me because I had no idea what had happened or why it had happened. So I ran the moment you let me go."

"I didn't get very far before the Nibi ordered me to go back. I resisted at first because I was scared. I thought it was trying to trick me but I eventually gave in because I also wanted to know more about you. Any time I considered giving up on tailing you, the Nibi would coax and prod me into staying as near to you as I could get. The only time the Nibi was happy and content was when I was close enough to touch you after I followed you from the village. The more time I spent with you, the more content the Nibi became and the less the bijuu would disturb my dreams or my thoughts."

"I tried asking it several times why it wanted to be near you but it refused to give me an answer," Yugito finished as she finally dropped her gaze. "The Nibi eventually fell completely silent after I'd asked you about your name."

"Does the Nibi feel at all drawn to Kuma the same way that it feels drawn to Tora?" Inoichi inquired curiously.

"No. I think it's actually a bit frightened of Kuma and there were times I felt some resentment from the bijuu when I was traveling alone through the dirt with Kuma but I don't know if that was because it dislikes Kuma or if it just resented the fact that we were separated from Tora for hours at a time."

"There's one thing I don't understand," Inu stated as he leaned closer to study Yugito. "How is it possible that your chakra reserves are so small if you are the host of one of the nine bijuu? Are you suppressing your chakra?"

"The day I began my training with the Nibi's chakra, my trainer inscribed a Limiter Seal in the middle of my back to limit the amount of chakra I have access to because they were afraid that the Nibi would take control of me and destroy the village before I could tame it. The seal was also to insure that I couldn't retaliate against those that hated me."

If Kojimaru thought he could get away with it, he'd march himself right back up to Kumo to hunt down each and every person responsible for hurting Yugito and slit their throats. He seriously doubted he'd even make it out of the office at this point though as evidenced by the tendril of shadow that reached out to merge with his shadow from Shikaku. He half glared through his mask at the Nara but the man simply arched an eyebrow in return and Kojimaru deflated instantly. He wouldn't be allowed to avenge Yugito any time soon, it seemed.

"Why didn't you deactivate the seal before you left the village? Or even once you arrived here in Konoha?" Inu inquired after a moment.

"The only one that can open and close the seal was my trainer and he only ever turned it off for my nightly training sessions with the Nibi."

"Do you have any idea of the potential disaster you've caused by running away from Kumo, Ni'i-chan?" the Hokage wearily asked the moment she'd fallen silent again before he flicked his gaze to Kojimaru.

"Yes, but I didn't realize just how much trouble I was getting into until after Tora and Kuma caught me sneaking up on their camp. I just wanted to be free and Tora was the first person to ever see me as a person and he was kind to me. If I didn't want to trust him, then I would have ignored the Nibi like I usually did. Tora had said he was a friend when I first asked him who he was and that was all that mattered to me when I snuck out of the village the moment I learned that the Konoha shinobi were being kicked out of the village."

"You do realize that you are going to have to disappear, ne?" Kasai pointed out as he crossed the room to stand beside Kojimaru so that he could get a good look at the girl. "Ni'i Yugito will have to die if you truly want to live here. You will have to forget everything that makes you Ni'i Yugito and become a new person entirely. Do you still think you can do that?"

"Will I still be able to spend time with Tora?"

"Yes, but it won't necessarily be daily contact."

"Will I have to be a kunoichi?"

"No, but it would be easier if you were since it would be far easier to hide you behind a mask," the Hokage answered. "I know that you had been attending Kumo's Shinobi Academy prior to your encounter with my shinobi, so I am aware that you have some training but do you want to be a kunoichi?"

"What about my Limiter Seal? Won't it get in the way?"

"That won't be a problem; I have already sent a request for one of Konoha's greatest seal masters to return to the village in order to deal with another matter and while he is here, he can also take a look at both the Nibi's Containment Seal and the Limiter Seal. I will also ask him to design a seal that will alter your appearance without the need to rely on a henge that can be dispelled so that we can better hide you."

"Okay, Hokage-sama."

"Does that mean you wish to work towards earning your hitai-ate?"

"Hai," Yugito replied as she once again looked up to meet Kojimaru's gaze. "I want to keep training so that I can keep growing stronger."

Kojimaru smiled slightly beneath his mask as he realized that the younger girl had taken what he'd told her the day he saved her to heart. She was certainly a spirited little thing; when she wasn't bogged down by her fears.

"Then I shall make the arrangements," the Hokage stated with a nod. "Now that that has been taken care of, I am going to ask you to go with Morino Ibiki and Yamanaka Inoichi. They are going to ask you a great many questions and I would like for you to be as open and honest as you were for me because the answers you give them will have a large impact on just how much freedom you be allowed for the next year or two."

"Can Tora come with me?"

"No, I'm afraid he can not; I am not yet finished with him. I can, however, send him to come collect you when I am done with him. Would that be acceptable?"

"Hai, Hokage-sama."

"Good, then I will speak to you again in a week or two so I can see how you are settling in."

Kojimaru reluctantly set his charge back on her feet as Inoichi and Ibiki strode up to collect her and he couldn't resist giving both men a warning glare that earned him a slap to the back of the head from Kasai. Kojimaru huffed in response to the silent rebuke and re-crossed his arms over his chest as he watched Yugito being ushered out of the room by Inoichi. The moment she was gone, he dropped his arms, tucked his hands in his pockets, and folded in on himself as he waited for the lecture he knew was coming.

"Are you trying to give me a heart attack, Tora?" the Hokage demanded in an irritated tone as he reached for his pipe and tobacco pouch. "Some days I swear you were put on this earth by the gods just to torment me." Kojimaru cringed and made himself even smaller as the Hokage's words unexpectedly cut him far deeper than they should have for a reason that he couldn't quite pinpoint. The aged shinobi then huffed as he noted the fifteen year old's response to his words before he gently added, "I know you weren't put here just to make me miserable; but it sure seems that way some days."

"And are those also the days that you wish I had not survived?" Kojimaru asked in a quiet voice that cut through the room with the explosive force of an exploding tag blowing up in one's face; some small part of him needing to lash out and hurt the Sandaime as deeply as the old man had just hurt him for a reason that escaped him.

"No, child," the Hokage wearily replied as he lowered his eyes to his desk in shame. "There was only one time, in a moment of weakness, that I had selfishly wished you both had died after we had found you because I had wished to avoid the complications that your very existence created for me and for Konoha. I immediately regretted ever thinking such uncharitable thoughts within seconds of them crossing my mind. I still regret them to this day. I am also grateful beyond words that Torifu took matters into his own hands and saw that the two of you were given the best childhood we could provide you with given the circumstances in which we had found you."

"Sumimasen, Hokage-sama, I should not have accused you…"

"You had every right to accuse me of being ruthless, child. It is my job as the Hokage to protect the entire village and sometimes that means I have to do things that go against my very nature. It is never a choice between good and bad, right and wrong, or even the hard way and the easy way. More often than not, being Hokage means learning how accept a lesser evil in order to prevent the greater evil. And even men who have lived as long as I have still make mistakes from time to time despite the wisdom we believe we have gained through our long lives. I am just thankful that I did not make a mistake when it came to the two of you for our village would certainly be far poorer without you here."

"But there would be far fewer splinters," Kasai interjected in a slightly petulant tone.

"Maybe you should stop ruining our birthdays every year," Tenzou deadpanned as he brushed his shoulder against Kojimaru's in a silent offer of comfort.

"That's what set you two off this time? You're upset because I had called you away from your cake and ice cream?"

"No, you pulled us away from our oniisan after he'd gone through great lengths just to get an entire day off to spend with us only for you to call us away from him instead," Kojimaru fired right back with a slight scowl. "It's bad enough you split us up in the first place but you keep ruining the few precious times when we have a rare chance to spend some real quality time together."

"Why the hell was I included in your revenge?" Inu demanded as he glared at both teens through his mask.

"Simple; you're the reason we were called in that day and you drove us into the ground every day since then so that we had no free time between training and patrol duty each night," Tenzou dryly pointed out.

"Besides, it's tradition to haze the rookies," Kojimaru added as he slowly straightened up and leaned into Tenzou.

"What does that have to do with anything? The last time I checked, the two of you were the rookies on my squad."

"If you say so, teichou; if you say so," the two boys replied in unison as the boys turned in sync to stare at the seventeen year old; both teens seeing their captain as a rookie because the man had never really worked with them before and it showed in the way he treated them (not that that was necessarily a bad thing, mind you).

"Kasai-sama, remind me again why I agreed to be the glorified babysitter for these two runts?"

"Because they're entertaining?" Taka inquired with suppressed amusement.

"No one asked the peanut gallery."

"Alright, gentlemen, that's enough," the Hokage ordered around a chuckle. "We still have unfinished business. To start, the four of you will need to make time to see Inoichi at some point today so that he can view your memories of your most recent mission. Once he has cleared all four of you, your squad will be assigned to watch over Ni'i Yugito until Jiraiya arrives to check the integrity of her Containment Seal, study her Limiter Seal, and design a Physical Modification Seal that will not interfere with her Containment Seal. And lastly, I would also like the four of you to test her and see where she stands when it comes to taijutsu, shuriken jutsu, chakra control, and basic survival skills."

"Wakarimasu, Hokage-sama," Inu acknowledged for the entire squad.

"Do any of you have any questions? No…? Then you are dismissed."

Kojimaru bowed to the Hokage in unison with Tenzou before he turned to leave with his team only to end up freezing in mid-step when Shikaku took control of him through his shadow. Sighing, he glanced back over his shoulder to see what the lazy Nara wanted with him.

"Since I know you plan to check on a certain old man at the first chance you get, I thought I should inform you that there is a certain little boy that will be equally pleased if you were to stop in and say hello," Shikaku explained as he released his shadows once he had the teen's attention.

Kojimaru perked up a bit at the mention of his godson as he realized it had been a long time since he'd last seen the little three year old. He then murmured a quiet, "Thank you for the reminder, Shikaku-san."

"No problem, gaki; it would have become troublesome if you waited too much longer to visit him – he's been growing increasingly restless since the last time you stopped by nearly three months ago."

Kojimaru snorted and shook his head at the aggrieved tone Shikaku's voice had taken on at the end of that statement; it would seem that his efforts to corrupt Shikamaru had not been a complete failure. As he turned to catch up with his teammates (who had stopped to wait for him the moment they realized he had stopped walking), Kojimaru wondered what it would take to get his godson interested in the fine art of pranking. Tenzou chuckled in response to the obvious direction his thoughts had taken (his brother knew him that well) as they fell into step once more.

The moment they exited the Hokage Tower, Inu turned to the rest of the squad and stated, "I will give the three of you two hours to go take care of any private business you need to attend to before you meet me out in front of the T and I Facility in order to get our mental reviews out of the way and so that we can collect our charge."

"Hai, teichou," Tenzou answered for both teens while Taka just saluted their captain before he disappeared in a cloud of smoke. Inu disappeared next; leaving the two masked teens standing alone in the courtyard in front of the Hokage's Tower. Tenzou then turned to Kojimaru and asked, "Are you going to be alright?"

"I'll be fine," Kojimaru assured the taller teen. "I'll meet you at our tree outside of the T and I Facility when our free time is up."

"Okay, I'll see you in a bit, then."

Kojimaru watched his brother sink into the dirt before he turned and walked towards the nearest tree. As soon as he merged into the living wood, he activated the seals that disguised his original features (he only needed them for a short time so the temporary feature of the self-activation wouldn't be an issue) and used his Mokuton: Kamen no Jutsu to hide his ANBU uniform. He then shifted down to the roots of the tree and shot off towards his house so that he could spend some time with his godfather and check on the clone he'd left behind first (providing Kosuke was home).

He slid into a tree with which he was intimately familiar just five minutes later and he took a moment to strengthen the old willow with a bit of his chakra before he stepped out of the tree and into his and his godfather's back garden as he removed his ANBU mask and tucked it into the hidden Storage Seal on the inside flap of his utility pouch. He let his eyes wander over the familiar organized chaos of the yard for a couple of minutes before he made his way to the house. A smile pulled the corners of his mouth up as he stepped into the kitchen and saw his godfather sitting at the table with a fresh pot of tea.

"Tadaima, oji," Kojimaru greeted warmly as the old man glanced up from the scroll he was reading.

"It is good to have you back, Kojimaru-kun," Kosuke replied as he rose from his seat and stepped around the table to sweep the teen into a hug. "I have missed you these past two months."

"I missed you to," Kojimaru murmured into Kosuke's shirt as he gladly returned the hug; the artificial redhead not feeling the least bit of embarrassment over the open affection with which he'd been greeted. "I only wish that I had been given more time to catch up with you."

"You are leaving on another mission already when you've only just returned?" Kosuke asked in surprise as he released the teen in order to grab another cup and pour Kojimaru some tea.

"No, not exactly a mission," Kojimaru replied with a shake of his head as he accepted the cup of tea his godfather passed him and sat down. "Our teichou gave us two hours of free time before we're to take care of the usual after mission mental debriefing with Inoichi and then our team has been assigned to watch over Konoha's newest refugee until Jiraiya-sama turns up to take care of a few things."

"It sounds like there is an interesting story or two you have there."

"That's one way to look at it; unfortunately I don't think I can share any details since I'm pretty certain the entire matter will end up being classified as a high priority village secret."

"Ah, say no more; I understand. How much time are you going to waste with this old man before you head off to corrupt your godson?"

"Fifty minutes," Kojimaru replied after he glanced up at the kitchen clock. "It's been nearly three months since I last spent time with the little gaki and Shikaku said he's getting antsy, so I figured I'd spend half of my free time to start teaching him the fine art of pranking."

"I'm surprised Shikaku hasn't strangled you yet for encouraging your godson to behave in an un-Nara-like manner."

"He probably thinks it would take too much effort to go through with it or he's too afraid of how badly his wife would hurt him in retaliation for removing my influence from Shikamaru's life," Kojimaru pointed out with a laugh that his godfather soon echoed. "Yoshino loves me."

The rest of the time Kojimaru spent with his godfather was spent catching up with what had been happening in the village while he'd been gone. Forty-five minutes after he'd arrived, Kojimaru then left to hunt down his clone (which was out wandering around the village) so he could give it more chakra. That only took him eight minutes to do after he'd found the Bunshin hanging out with Izumo and Kotetsu at the main gates (and it only took that long because he'd needed to apply another henge to disguise himself to prevent the two Chuunin from figuring out that they had been talking to a clone).

After that, he hurried off to the Nara Estate to collect his godson before he disappeared into the grounds of the forested estate to take the three year old to play with the deer. Ten minutes before he was due to meet back up with the rest of his squad, Kojimaru reluctantly returned his pouting godson to his mother before he Shunshined back into the forest, dug out his ANBU mask, slipped his mask onto his face, dropped the henge on his uniform, and deactivated the seals hiding his true face.

He then slipped into the nearest tree and made his way to the T and I Facility across town. He stepped out of the tree beside the entrance to the T and I Department just two minutes later. A quick search of the immediate area turned up Tenzou and Taka loitering around the entrance while Inu was no where in sight. The teen strolled up to join the other two as soon as he finished scanning the area.

"Have fun?" Tenzou inquired with obvious amusement.

"Yes, it was nice to hang out with the deer for a little while."

"Meaning you spent the entire time corrupting a certain little fawn," Tenzou corrected with a laugh.

"Of course, it would be a dereliction of my responsibilities if I failed to impart my vast knowledge of the Pranking Arts to the next generation."

"Do I even want to know which poor soul had the misfortune of having you as a mentor?" Inu dryly asked as he dropped down from the roof.

"Whoever said I was only corrupting just one person?" Kojimaru countered with an unseen smirk beneath his mask.

"As your captain, I am hereby giving you an order to notify me twenty-four hours prior to unleashing your minions on the village so that I have adequate time to prepare and hand in my resignation to Kasai," Inu retorted after staring at Kojimaru for a long minute. "I need to protect what little sanity I have left and that means I refuse to be stuck cleaning up any messes you inspired by default."

Kojimaru just laughed and shook his head as he turned to enter the T and I Facility. His laughter cut off abruptly when he opened the door and saw Inoichi waiting in the lobby. It wasn't that he didn't like Inoichi, he did; he just really hated it each time the blond was required to riffle through his memories. It wasn't so bad when it was just a few memories from an uneventful mission but he couldn't stand it when Inoichi viewed the memories of those missions that had gone wrong. The reason for that was because he always, without fail, relived the memories that were being viewed.

Even if he was unconscious or sleeping, he would see the memories; only then they would invade his dreams and twist themselves into terrible nightmares that would haunt him for days before they faded into nothing.

"Since scanning your memories will be the most difficult, did you wish to go first or last, Tora?" Inoichi inquired the moment he turned to meet the teen's gaze; a wry smile turning up the corners of his mouth and letting the teen know that the man knew exactly what had run through his mind the moment he entered the building.

"Is my little stray still being questioned?"

"No, we finished with her about half an hour ago; Aoba is entertaining her in the lounge right now over an early lunch."

"I'll go last then," Kojimaru replied as he slipped passed Inoichi and headed for the lounge. "Spending an hour or two with an old friend sounds too good to pass up and if I let you drag me through my memories first, then I'm not going to be able to enjoy his company."

"Are you sure you wouldn't rather get it over with first so you don't spend the next hour dwelling on the mental review?"

"I'm certain," Kojimaru called back over his shoulder without turning around. "Aoba won't let me work myself up into a panic."

"Suit yourself," Inoichi called back to him before he turned to the rest of the squad and asked, "So, which one of you is going to be first?"

Kojimaru didn't stick around to hear the reply as he sped up and navigated his way through the maze of hallways that made up the T and I Facility. It didn't take him long to reach his destination and he phased through the door to the lounge without bothering to open it. Aoba glanced up as soon as he stepped out of the door and grinned at him while lifting an arm in greeting.

"Hey, Birdbrain; long time to no see, oniisan," Kojimaru called as he eagerly bounded across the room when he noticed that Aoba was alone for the moment; the older teen snorting in response to the nickname that Kojimaru had given to him after learning the older boy had signed the Crow Contract when he had been offered the opportunity about the same time that Kojimaru and Tenzou had taken their contracts. "Where's my little stray hiding?"

"I sent a Karasu Bunshin to escort her to the bathroom, Same no Kouji," Aoba replied as he grabbed Kojimaru in a headlock and gave him a noogie. "Glad to see you made it home in one piece. I wasn't surprised when I learned that you brought trouble home with you though."

"That's only because I drag our youngest brother with me everywhere I go," Kojimaru quipped back.

"I heard that, Tora," Tenzou growled as he entered the room in time to hear the last minute of Aoba and Kojimaru's short exchanged.

"And yet you didn't deny it," Aoba pointed out with a laugh as he let go of Kojimaru in order to greet Tenzou next.

They were still standing around teasing one another when the door opened as Aoba's clone escorted Yugito back into the room and Kojimaru nearly ended up kissing the floor when he was tackled from behind by the disguised eleven year old. Aoba and Tenzou both laughed at him until he swept their feet out from under them with his left leg as he untangled himself from Yugito and sat up. All four of them ended up staying on the floor as the three teens spent the next hour talking about nothing important while Yugito silently clung to Kojimaru and listened.

At the end of the hour, Taka turned up to let Tenzou know that it was his turn to see Inoichi before he [Taka] left the building on an errand for Inu. Kojimaru and Aoba would then spend another half an hour teaching Yugito how to play Black Jack. Tenzou would return at the end of that half hour to let Kojimaru know that it was his turn and to collect Yugito in order to take her back to the ANBU Facility.

"Come on, squirt; I'm supposed to take you back to see Kasai so he can set you up to take a couple of academic assessment tests."

"Why can't I wait here for Tora?" Yugito demanded with a slight pout.

"Well, for starters, Tora needs to see Inoichi-san before he can leave and Tora is most likely going to be grumpy after he is done and the tests will help keep you from being bored while we are waiting for Tora to get un-grumpy."

"Un-grumpy is not even a real word."

"It might not be a real word but an un-grumpy Tora is far more preferable to a grumpy Tora; trust me."

"It's also much better than a grumpy Kuma," Kojimaru added with a snort.

"Here, here," Aoba agreed as he finished putting away the cards and poker chips they had been playing with.

"Whatever," Tenzou replied as he rolled his eyes beneath his mask. "We'll see you in about three hours in the usual training room, Tora."

"I'll leave the door locked but unsealed for you," Kojimaru promised as he followed Tenzou and Yugito out of the door before he turned in the direction of Inoichi's office. Aoba followed him for a short distance before he too went his separate way and Kojimaru tossed him a friendly, "See you later, Birdbrain."

"Ja ne, Shark Bait," Aoba fired back with a laugh when Kojimaru grumbled over being called that dreaded nickname again.

When he reached the blond's office, Kojimaru knocked before he opened the door and stepped inside. He tensed up a bit when he noticed that Inu was leaning against the far wall; he had not expected his captain to be present during his session with Inoichi. He frowned in the older teen's direction a moment before he gave his attention to Inoichi.

"Go ahead and take off your mask and sit down so that we can start," Inoichi instructed as he gestured to the partially reclined chair in the center of the room. Kojimaru hesitated as he glanced between the chair and Inu a couple of times before he returned his gaze to Inoichi and tipped his head minutely in Inu's direction in a silent question. Inoichi huffed and replied, "You're going to have to show him your face at some point, gaki. He is your teichou and it is standard procedure for all ANBU teichou to sit in on all mental evaluations and memory debriefings for the members of their squad – though not all of them choose to do so."

Kojimaru shook his head no in response, he was not ready to bare his face to Inu; especially not when he was going to be in such a vulnerable position where his emotions would be on display during Inoichi's viewing technique. It wasn't that he didn't trust Inu, he did (to a point) but at the same time, he didn't yet trust him enough to show him his face.

"I promise not to laugh at your acne," Inu interjected when Inoichi palmed his face and grumbled under his breath about stubborn brats.

Kojimaru shot Inu a dirty look and defensively crossed his arms over his chest. Inoichi huffed as he glanced back up at Kojimaru before he stated, "I can't force you to show your face but you are going to need to remove your mask so that I can view your memories. So, that means you are either going to have to take it off yourself or I am going to knock you out and take it off for you; your choice."

The promised threat had Kojimaru tensing his shoulders as he snapped his head back to Inoichi in order to gauge just how serious he was being about the threat. His shoulders sagged in defeat a moment later as it became patently obvious that he was very serious about the threat and Kojimaru unfolded his arms so he could reach up to take off his mask. He paused at the last second though as it occurred to him that Inoichi hadn't said he couldn't hide his face behind a henge and Kojimaru smirked as he activated his Mokuton: Kamen no Jutsu for the fourth time that day, though this time he was only covering his face and not his uniform.

As the leaves grew out of his head and rolled down his body before they disappeared, Inoichi gave a huff of exasperated resignation before he pointed at the chair. Kojimaru nodded and dropped himself into the chair and wriggled around a bit to make himself comfortable. Inoichi waited until he stopped squirming around before he walked up beside him, reached out to lift the tiger mask from Kojimaru's face, and immediately let out a startled cry and jerked back in shock as he caught sight of the disguise Kojimaru had applied.

"Chikushou, you are an ass, Tora," Inoichi growled once he recovered from being startled by the sun-bleached skull grinning up at him where Kojimaru's face should be. He then slapped the mask he still held down on Kojimaru's chest.

"Serves you right for trying to push me," Kojimaru stated in a flat voice as he tried not to tense up when Inoichi placed his left palm over Kojimaru's forehead and formed half a hand seal with his other hand. "You know why I hide my face."

"Yes, I know; you're a paranoid little gaki with trust issues."

"Better to be safe and considered paranoid than sorry and in a world of hurt," Kojimaru replied in return as he closed his eyes and calmed himself as he felt Inoichi slide into his mind.

'_You do know that you can trust Inu with your life, ne?_' Inoichi asked softly as he waded through Kojimaru's mind to where his memories were located.

'_My life yes, my secrets are a different matter entirely, Inoichi,_' Kojimaru mentally replied back as the journey to Kumo played through his mind.

'_And you still consider your face a secret?_'

'_Yes, my face is just as big of a clue as to who I am as my Kekkei Genkai._'

'_Your eyes are a bigger clue._'

'_I can do nothing about my eyes other than use my seal, you know that._'

'_You can't hide your face forever, Kojimaru._'

'_That might be true but I can and will hide it for as long as possible. Or at least I will until I can talk to Tenzou about it because my secrets and his secrets are so closely intertwined._'

Kojimaru sensed more than heard Inoichi's mental sigh as the man moved on to sift through his memories of the weeks that he'd spent exploring the streets of Kumo alongside Tenzou. When he reached the morning that they had saved Yugito from her attackers, Kojimaru's anger slipped out of his control for a brief moment and dropped the temperature of Inoichi's office by ten full degrees before he regained control. Inoichi paused the memory playback until he had calmed down and then distracted the teen with inanities before he began playing the memory once more.

The man was well versed in how to calm Kojimaru down while viewing the more unpleasant memories in order to prevent the teen from unintentionally throwing him out of his mind by physically breaking the jutsu as he had in the past.

Forty-five minutes and three small breaks later, Inoichi released Kojimaru from the jutsu and the teen reached up to press his hands to his head as he curled up in the chair and tried to ignore the pounding headache he now had. He reluctantly uncurled and sat up when Inoichi dropped a hand on his shoulder a couple minutes later and readily accepted the two aspirins and glass of water that the older shinobi was holding out to him. He then wearily climbed to his feet and glanced in Inu's direction when the older teen let out a snort of amusement as he got his first clear glimpse of Kojimaru's skull disguise.

Kojimaru rolled his eyes and shoved his ANBU mask back on his face before he glanced back at Inoichi to see if the man needed him for anything else. Inoichi just made a shooing motion at him as he dropped down behind his desk in order to nurse his own headache. Kojimaru didn't waste any time in making a bee-line for the exit. He was more than a little annoyed when Inu quickly caught up to him and snagged his elbow to stop him for a moment.

"We still need to talk," Inu stated without preamble before he Shunshined the two of them out of the building and across the length of the village.

* * *

**Translations:** Japanese to English

Chikushou – damn  
Gaki – brat  
Mokuton: Kamen no Jutsu – Wood Disguise Technique  
Oniisan/niisan – older brother  
Same no Kouji – Shark Bait  
Tadaima – I'm home, I'm back, etc.

* * *

**11-15-15:** _Minor edits made to chapter to fix spelling/grammar mistakes and removed unnecessary author's notes._


	27. The Discussion

**Disclaimer:** _All HP characters are the property of JKR, the WB, and respective publishing companies and all Naruto characters are the property of Masashi Kishimoto. This is nothing more than a simple FanFiction that I have written. I have made no money from this or any of the other stories I have posted on this or other sites._

**Warnings:** _Mild to moderate violence, character death, alternate universe (i.e. kiss canon goodbye), OCC behaviors and personalities, a number of original characters and obscure canon characters to flesh out family trees, random chosen last names to give a number of characters surnames, and who knows what else._

**AN:** _This story is self-beta'd; so there may be occasional grammatical or spelling errors that crop up every now and then and for those I apologize in advance._

* * *

Chapter Twenty-Seven: The Discussion

_October 11, 0295 AtD, 2:19 PM  
Konohagakure no Sato, Hi no Kuni_

Kakashi let go of Tora's elbow the moment they came to a stop in front of the ANBU Facility and ignored the glare the kid sent his way in response for dragging him along via the Shunshin no Jutsu without any prior warning. Kakashi opened the front door and gestured for Tora to precede him and the kid gave him another dirty look before he complied with the unspoken order. A soft chuckle escaped Kakashi lips; he enjoyed irritating the teen as it helped to make up for the gaki turning him into a woman on more than one occasion during their recent mission.

Once inside of the building, Kakashi caught the teen's elbow once more (to prevent the kid from disappearing into the floors into order to avoid the coming discussion) and ignored the way Tora attempted to tug his arm free as he asked, "You're room or mine?"

"I'm sorry, teichou, but I keep telling you that I'm just not interested in you that way," Tora loudly proclaimed; his words immediately garnering the attention of every single person in the lobby.

"Baka, that's not what I meant and you know it," Kakashi retorted as he reached up and slapped the kid on the back of the head even as he fought down a blush over the insinuation; the cat calls coming from the kunoichi and a few of the other shinobi present weren't helping though. "And for the record, short and stocky does nothing for me; I prefer a few soft curves on my bed partners. Now, pick a venue unless you want to have our discussion right here in the lobby?"

"Fine, but I don't want to make a mess of my room and I don't feel comfortable using yours; I'd much rather visit one of the training rooms so I can let you know if you over step your bounds."

"I can live with that; lead the way, gaki."

Kakashi quickly released the teen when he felt several sharp splinters jab his palm but refused to acknowledge the stinging pain that accompanied the minor attack. He also didn't take the fifteen year old to task for attacking him like that; he'd earned it, after all – he had picked up on the fact that Tora didn't particularly like to be touched by those he was not close to fairly quickly. That line of thinking brought a small frown to Kakashi's face as he recalled the way that the kid had not hesitated to allow the young Yugito close despite the fact that she was a perfect stranger.

He wondered if his willingness to tolerate her touch had anything to do with the fact that she was a girl or if it was because she was still very much a child or if there was far more to it than just that.

Kakashi shoved that line of thinking out of his mind a moment later as the two of them reached the stairs leading up to the training rooms. As he walked just behind the shorter teen, Kakashi studied his posture; noting the stiffness in the boy's shoulders and the near mincing gate of his steps. In fact, the kid was practically oozing tension and Kakashi briefly wondered what was bothering Tora before he realized that the kid probably thought he was going to be yelled at; either for the mistake he'd made during the mission or for his refusal to show Kakashi his face.

As they reached the top floor and headed for the nearest open training room, Kakashi made an attempt to put the kid at ease as he jokingly quipped, "Relax, Same no Kouji, I don't bite until after the second date and I have no plans for there to ever be a first date between us."

"And yet you're the one that insisted we go somewhere private so you can have a _word_ with me," Tora countered as he snapped the door shut behind Kakashi and barricaded it with several thick branches that grew out of the door at a touch from the teen.

"But you are the one that just locked us into the room together," Kakashi pointed out. "Although, it probably would have been just as effective if you'd used the barrier seals instead."

"I wasn't looking to lock everyone out, teichou; just most everyone. So what did you need to talk about that was so pressing that you had to drag me across the village without a word of warning? Are you planning to yell at me too? Is that why you didn't want an audience?"

"No, I'm not going to yell at you," Kakashi replied with a snort. "If you will recall, I wanted to have a discussion with you before we were sent to Kumo."

"About what…? If you're going to start demanding that I tell you my secrets…"

"No, I did not wish to corner you just so I could drag your secrets from you. I do realize that it will take time to build up enough trust between us before you feel comfortable telling me anything personal. I also didn't sit in on your session with Inoichi just to force you to show me your face. Since the day I was promoted to captain, I have always sat in on the mandatory mental assessments for my squad members because I take my duties as teichou seriously. If a problem crops up during a mental assessment, I want to know the minute it is found instead of hours or days after the fact. Had you asked me to, I would have turned away or moved so that your face would not have been visible to me."

"Oh, I didn't think to ask that of you."

"And you knew exactly how Inoichi would react when he pulled off your mask and saw the disguise you'd put on."

"Hai," Tora drawled in obvious amusement.

"Before I get to my reason for dragging you off to talk, will you answer me one question?"

"It would depend on the question."

"Will you tell me who it is that you and Kuma are hiding from? I know it has to be someone powerful but the only individuals I can think of would be another Kage yet Kasai said that none of the other villages are actively searching for you."

"I can't answer your question because it isn't just my secret to tell. If you want information that involves my past, then you're going to have to wait until my brother can join us because it involves him as well."

"I can accept that. Just out of curiosity, are the two of you actually related?"

"Kuma and I are brothers in all but name," Tora replied and Kakashi could hear the conviction in his voice.

"Don't you mean all but blood?"

"No, I meant what I said; we are brothers in all but name."

"So, I take it that means that you both share at least one parent?"

"No."

"Then how…?" Kakashi began to ask as he furrowed his brow in confusion.

"I won't answer that without Kuma's consent."

"Ah, right, gomen, I did not mean to push; I was just trying to understand."

"If you're done trying to grill me, maybe you could tell me what it is that you wanted to talk to me about?" Tora prompted a moment later as he made himself comfortable on the floor in the middle of the room.

Kakashi hummed in agreement as he took a seat facing the teen so that he could keep eye contact with the kid without appearing to loom over him before he stated, "The reason why I've wanted to talk with you was to discuss what you saw while we were rounding up the spies and traitors in the village back on the sixth of August."

"What I saw…?" Tora repeated in confusion as he titled his head to one side.

"Hai; I'm referring to my Sharingan," Kakashi clarified as he gestured to his hidden left eye. "While it isn't exactly a secret that I have an implanted Sharingan, I would prefer that you not pass that information around. The Uchiha aren't exactly pleased about a non-clansman having their precious doujutsu and I'd rather not throw too many reminders in their face least they feel the urge to petition the Hokage to have my eye forcibly removed a third or fourth time. It also makes a more effective weapon if fewer people know that I have it."

"Oh, I'd forgotten all about that."

"You forgot…?" Kakashi repeated in disbelief.

"It wasn't important and I had far bigger worries on my mind after we were assigned the mission to Kumo. You didn't have to tell me not to talk about it though. I'm familiar enough with the concept of hiding one's identity that I wouldn't have gone blabbing the fact that you're Hatake Kakashi to the world. I admit to being shocked a bit at first…"

"Wait… how did you figure out who I was?"

"It wasn't that hard, everyone knows who you are and the moment I saw you uncover your Sharingan the first time, it was easy to guess," Tora pointed out with a snort. "You also have a rather distinctive hair color and style."

"Okay, fair enough. I guess I thought because you didn't say anything that you hadn't figured it out."

"I'm neither blind nor stupid, teichou."

"I never said you were, gaki."

"So, was that all you wanted? Are we done now?"

"Yeah, that was pretty much the extent of what I wanted to discuss for the moment. Unless there's something you wanted to ask me?"

"Well, there has been on thing that has been bugging me since I learned who you were."

"Oh, what's that?"

"Why the hell did you pick me and Kuma to be on your squad? Why not someone older and more experienced?"

"Ah, I wasn't the one who made the initial decision to place you on my squad."

"Who…?"

"Kasai recommended the two of you before I even had a chance to see the list of unassigned guards. After I reviewed your truncated file, listened to Kasai's reasoning, and watched the two of you demonstrate of your skills; I accepted your placement on my squad. My reason for pushing you as hard as I did during those handful of training sessions was more about me learning your fighting styles and working towards us being able to fight as a team than it was to haze you and your brother just because you were the 'rookies'."

"Oh, I guess that makes sense; Kasai does tend to mother my brother and me more often than not. For a while, I thought that maybe…" Tora started before he trailed off and looked away from Kakashi.

"You thought what…?"

"That someone else had told you who we were because of who you are and that that was the reason you'd chosen us to be on your squad," Tora replied without meeting Kakashi's eye and the seventeen year old wondered who Tora was talking about but he didn't press for more information because of how uncomfortable the younger boy looked.

"Was there anything else you wanted to ask me?"

"Ano… how angry are you? About what happened… about the way I messed up…?"

"I am not as angry now as I was at first," Kakashi replied as he glanced away from the teen this time. "Your moment of carelessness, brief as it was, could have cost us both the mission and our lives. What was worse was that neither you nor your brother thought to warn us about the slip up you made."

"We weren't trying to cover up my mistake; we just thought we'd dodged the kunai when nothing happened between that moment and when we met with you to give our weekly report. You also only ever asked us for a summary of what we learned each week in order to save time during our weekly meetings rather than drawing them out with a detailed accounting of our interactions with the various people encountered during our trips into the village."

"Did Kasai ever say anything to you about what happened to the two members of my squad that you replaced?"

"No," Tora replied in confusion.

"They were killed during our last mission together."

"What happened?" Tora hesitantly asked.

"The individual that was selected to take the place of my former teichou when he retired a year ago got himself and a fellow teammate killed because he gave away our position. He lost control of his emotions when he spotted a small, harmless snake slither across his foot. He reacted without thinking and he paid for his lack of self control with his life and the life of another teammate. Taka and I barely escaped with our lives."

Tora stared at Kakashi with wide green eyes for a long moment before he shivered and wrapped his arms around his stomach. Kakashi had no doubt that the teen understood the point that he'd been trying to make and he let his words hang in the air for a moment longer before he spoke up again.

"You got lucky this time; no one died. Unfortunately, you've also created a bit of a problem for the village because you basically lured a Jinchuuriki away from Kumo right from under the nose of the Raikage. Knowing what I do now about Yugito's parentage and her status as a host, I have no doubt that the reason for the Raikage's sudden change of heart and his urgent desire to see the back of us had everything to do with the fact that your little stray ditched her handler and disappeared off the face of the earth out of the blue."

"I didn't do it on purpose."

"Never said you did but accidents can cause just as much damage, if not more damage, than intentional actions. It is also far harder to predict the consequences of an accident because you have little to no warning when they will happen."

"Will you be punishing me too?"

"No, but I will be sending you and your brother for some additional training from one of the other divisions in the hopes that it will help you to avoid making similar mistakes in the future," Kakashi answered as he smirked at the thought of the training he'd arranged for the pair during the two hours free time he'd given his squad. "Who handed out punishment to you over what happened? And what was it?"

"Kasai; he forbade me from brewing any tea while on ANBU property for an entire week. And I'm not allowed to ask anyone else to make it for me either. He also ordered me to find another way to hide my eyes other than using tinted glasses and goggles in order to prevent it from happening again."

Kakashi snorted in amusement before he commented, "Sounds like he let you off rather easy."

"You're only saying that because you're probably one of those heathens that doesn't care that the cafeteria here only serves inferior tea."

Kakashi gaped at the fifteen year old from behind his masks for a moment before he burst out laughing at the absurdity of being called a heathen because he didn't complain about the quality of tea that was served in the mess hall. It took him several minutes to regain control of his amusement because every time he glanced at the obviously sulking teen across from him, he'd break into laughter once more. It was just too damn funny.

"Obsessions aside; was there anything else that you wanted to ask me?" Kakashi asked once he finally managed to quell most of his laughter.

"Yeah, just how much did Kasai tell you about us?"

"Not anywhere near as much as I need and want to know," Kakashi replied as all lingering traces of amusement vanished in the blink of an eye in response to the question. "All I really received was a bare glimpse of your abilities as recorded in your public file, a brief summary of your mission record, and a couple of vague warnings about what not to do in order to avoid setting off your tempers. Most of what I know, I actually learned from observing the two of you during the past nine weeks."

"Oh."

"Since you sort of brought the subject up, will you tell me more about your Kekkei Genkai? I couldn't help but notice the differences between your Mokuton and Kuma's Mokuton."

"My chakra is different, it's corrupted. I wear a special seal that alters my chakra signature because otherwise it would be too easy for chakra sensors, those who are chakra sensitive, and trained ninken to recognize me. And because my chakra is corrupted, it means that both of my Kekkei Genkai are corrupted but the corruption is most obvious when it comes to my Mokuton. I can't use any of the Shodai's jutsu like Kuma can because of that corruption, so I had to make my own and alter the existing ones to make them work for me."

"Is that also the reason why you've not used your Hyouton in my presence?" Kakashi asked as he filed away the information regarding the green eyed teen's chakra and made a note to have one of his ninken summonses spend a little time around the younger boy to see if his partners could sense the corruption the kid mentioned.

"Actually, I have used it around you, you just probably didn't notice because I didn't use any of the flashier jutsu that are associated with that ability."

"When and how did you use it?"

"There were a few times during the mission that I used it to cool myself off when I got overheated. It also slipped out of my control a couple of times earlier when Inoichi was viewing my memories and dropped the temperature in his office several degrees though you might not have been close enough to notice. Aside from one or two other jutsu, the rest of my Hyouton techniques are rather flashy, destructive, and deadly; which is why I didn't use any of them when we were dealing with the spies and traitors two months ago."

"Why didn't you use any of those jutsu during our training sessions?"

"I just never got around to it. Why does it matter?"

"In order for me to best utilize the squad's combined skills during missions, I need to know exactly what each member is capable of doing so that I can come up with appropriate strategies to use in the various scenarios we could potentially end up in."

"Oh. Why didn't you just ask us to give you a list of the jutsu that we know?"

"Seeing what you are capable of is far more effective than memorizing a list of techniques."

"You still could have just asked us to show you all of our jutsu."

"I did; why do you think I sparred with you during our training sessions? I never expected you to hold back though."

"It is not safe to spar with some of the techniques I created to use with my Hyouton; especially when a person is not prepared for them or if they have no experience in countering the more destructive ones," Tora grimly stated; which only made Kakashi even more curious about what the kid could do.

"Will you show me now?"

Tora stared at him for a long moment and Kakashi felt for sure he was going to refuse until he reluctantly nodded and climbed to his feet as he instructed, "Please stand back beside the door so that I can create an ice shield to protect you from my larger attacks."

Kakashi quickly and eagerly complied; part of him excited by the prospect of seeing what promised to be a collection of rare jutsu. Once Kakashi had propped himself up against the wall beside the door, Tora ran through a series of hand seals before he formed a half dome of ice that surrounded everything within eight feet of the door. Kakashi immediately pushed away from the wall to inspect the dome and quickly found that aside from being cold to the touch, the dome of ice was indistinguishable from a glass dome despite how thick it looked. Part of him wondered if his Chidori could cut through the ice but refrained from trying for the moment.

Inspection complete, Kakashi focused on Tora as the younger teen moved to stand on the far left end of the room. The kid glanced in his direction briefly before he faced forward and ran through another series of hand seals. At the end of the sequence, the entire floor of the room was covered in two feet of water that he'd pulled from the air and froze solid ice in the blink of an eye. Tora then created a small army of Moku Bunshin that he set about methodically capturing and killing one right after another. Each jutsu that the kid used grew progressively more violent on top of covering a wider range than the jutsu preceding it.

Kakashi saw ice whips, ice ropes, ice shuriken, ice spikes, ice bullets, ice avalanches, ice boulders, and even a dozen vicious life-size white ice wolves and tigers that tore their targets to shreds. There was also a rain of ice splinters the size of sewing needles, a hail of razor sharp ice kunai, a yawning maw of ice spikes that opened up to swallow and crush several clones in one bite, and colorless ice clones that wielded pairs of wicked looking ice swords. Aside from the various hand seal sequences (for those jutsu that required them), Tora never moved an inch during the first half of the demonstration.

When the last Moku Bunshin had been destroyed, Tora calmly cleaned up the mess of ice and wood with a few hands seals and a couple of gestures before he recreated the army of Bunshin to continue on to the second half of the demonstration. Just seconds before Tora began showing off once more, Kakashi was joined in his protective bubble by Kuma and a now masked Yugito.

"Did you goad him into performing for you or did you just tag along to watch him vent?" Kuma asked as he grew a Mokuton bench for Yugito to sit down on while he leaned against the wall beside her.

"I asked him to show me what he could do with his Hyouton," Kakashi replied without taking his eyes off of Tora as the kid used his Hyouton to form a pair of unnaturally short wakizashi blades. "You missed the more impressive part of the demonstration."

"No, everything he would have done before now would have been a warm up exercise for his battle dance," Kuma idly corrected as the first clone rushed forward to attack Tora.

Kakashi opened his mouth to ask Kuma what he meant by that only to close it when he saw what the boy was talking about as Tora moved for the first time since he first started the demonstration. The green eyed fifteen year old flowed across the floor as he engaged the first clone; his movements filled with graceful economy that was more than a little unexpected given how short and stocky his build was. He was beauty in motion as he blocked, dodged, parried, attacked, and counterattacked even as he spun, ducked, jumped, and wove in and around his opponents with a fluidity that reminded Kakashi of water or possibly wind while he cut through his non-living opponents.

And then the kid threw his swords even as he formed another pair that was also thrown. Each time one of his blades took flight, it would cut down its target before the clone could defend itself. To Kakashi's astonishment, the kid never once faltered in his deadly dance as he continuously launched the blades he formed almost the same exact instant he launched the previous sword from his hands so that he was never without a weapon in hand to defend himself from those clones that got close to him. Kakashi had seen dozens of different kenjutsu styles over the course of his shinobi career but he'd never seen anything that even came close to Tora's battle dance.

He could only imagine the number of hours (of years) that the kid had to have put into creating and perfecting his kenjutsu style; though Kakashi knew there was bound to be plenty of room for improvement even if he couldn't pinpoint the weaknesses in the style yet (he was only seeing it for the first time, after all). At the same time, Tora's style dealt with two of the most glaring weaknesses of most kenjutsu styles; dealing with an overwhelming number of opponents and accounting for fluctuating distances.

Those shinobi who took up kenjutsu often forgot to take into consideration that you had to get in close to your opponent to use your sword. Sure, there were ninjutsu out there that were designed to be used in conjunction with a sword but those also required a certain amount of distance between you and your targets in order to use them. So, you either had to be right up close to your opponent or keep your opponent far enough away from you that you can use any tricks you've learned or created. Fighting a large group of opponents with a single sword was even harder because you had to be everywhere at once in order to prevent yourself from getting skewered from behind.

Tora's style dealt with both problems; he could attack at any range while in motion and he could deal with multiple targets because he wasn't limited to one blade. The fact that he was constantly in motion also meant that he was a far harder target to hit because he never stayed in once place. His movements were fairly unpredictable too, which meant that it would be far harder for an intelligent opponent to out fox him just by watching him fight.

That wasn't to say that there weren't holes in the style, there were. And the longer Kakashi watched, the easier it became for him to pick out the weaknesses. The first weakness he noted was Tora's tendency to telegraph his moves even if the pattern of his moves was far too random to predict. However, a good enough opponent could easily keep up with the teen because he or she would have a split second's warning before each attack or block. Next he had noticed that as Tora's throwing speed increased, his accuracy decreased. He also mistakenly thought weapons made of ice would be far weaker than steal weapons.

There were other weaknesses as well but those were the most noteworthy ones. They were also ones that Kakashi knew he could help him to eliminate with time and practice.

The demonstration ended just a few minutes later as the last clone fell after Tora had decapitated it; a move that actually made Kakashi's insides squirm uncomfortably as his mind summoned up the memory of Nezumi's death. He shoved the memory aside before it could finish playing out before his mind's eye as he reached out to knock on the ice dome to get Tora's attention. The green eyed teen turned to blink in his direction before he shook himself as he caught sight of the two that had joined Kakashi.

The kid bounded over to the dome a heartbeat later and slapped it with his hand; causing the ice to melt in the blink of an eye. The dome held its shape for a split second before the water crashed down over all three of those that had been inside of it. The unexpected sound of Tora's laughter echoing through the room told Kakashi that the gaki had soaked the three of them on purpose. Kuma merely huffed in exasperation before he dried himself out with a burst of chakra while Yugito actually gave a cry of dismayed irritation before she began chasing Tora all over the room.

Kakashi expelled the water from his uniform with a pulse of chakra while he watched Tora deftly dance around the eleven year old that was trying to catch him. He was amazed that the kid still had that much energy left given the rather extensive demonstration he'd just given. Kuma upped the ante when he joined the two and attempted to snag his brother in his Mokuton. Tora just laughed louder as he used his own Mokuton to counter Kuma's attacks and trip Yugito up any time she tried to take advantage of Kuma's attacks to sneak up on him.

Some how or another, the impromptu spar turned into a snow fight as Tora froze the water in the room once more before he turned it into a pile of shaved ice using a fuuton jutsu. Kakashi mostly stayed out of the three way war so that he could further observe the two teens and their interactions with their charge. It didn't take him long to figure out that both boys were purposefully doing everything they could to make the younger girl smile and laugh; they were teaching her how to have fun and helping her to forget about her insecurities and fears.

They were also wearing her out in an attempt to determine her current levels of stamina and endurance.

By supper time, Yugito could barely keep her eyes open and the only reason why she didn't fall asleep in her food was because she was also ravenous after spending two hours straight chasing after both teens. She didn't last long after the last bite of her meal passed through her lips though and Kakashi followed the two teens as Tora carried the sleeping child to his room where he promptly transferred the kunoichi in training into the unexpected nest growing out of the wall near the ceiling. While the teen tucked the child into the bed, Kakashi took a moment to study the small room that should have been nearly identical to his own room but actually wasn't; this being the first time he'd been inside Tora's room.

The first thing he noticed was that the standard ANBU issued desk, chair, and locker that each room within the ANBU Barracks was typically furnished with had been replaced with what looked like hand crafted wooden furniture. All three pieces were decorated with detailed carvings of otters, fish, and sea weed. There was also a non-standard wooden coat rack that was made to look like a standing otter holding a trio of spears that doubled as coat hooks. Hanging from one of the spears was a sleeveless gray haori made out of sharkskin, a black pirate's captain's hat with a bright red feather, and a corded necklace strung with what he thought might be shark's teeth.

The wall beneath the nest-like bed sported several tasteful water colors of seascapes, rivers, and waterfalls. On the opposite wall, there was a huge underwater mural of two fierce looking otters fighting a great white shark three times their size armed with nothing but a pair of harpoon spears against a backdrop of seaweed. The built in toilet and shower in the room had been blocked off with a wooden tri-paneled screen. On each panel of the screen, a different scene had been carved into the wood; the left-hand panel had a pair of wolves lounging between a pair of trees, the middle panel had a stag drinking from a river, and the right-hand panel had a tiger half hidden in long grass.

A glance upwards revealed that the ceiling had been painted to mimic the leafy canopy of a forest while the wooden floor had been partially covered with a rug that was woven out of reeds and shaped like a fish. Tacked to the back of the door over the master seal that controlled the room's security barrier, there was a large poster of a flowering tea plant. And lastly, sitting above the door, there was a harpoon spear that looked exactly like the ones found on the mural with Same no Kouji carved along the shaft in both kanji and romaji. Dangling from a cord that had been tied just beneath the spear's barbed head was a pair of broken shark teeth.

Both the spear's head and the shark teeth tied to the weapon were covered with dried blood; an indication that neither one of them were just for show. Kakashi wondered if the harpoon spear and the teeth had anything to do with the rather amusing nickname that the one-eyed otter Tora had summoned to fight at his side back in August had called the kid. Seeing the dried blood made a part of him hope not because the only scenario he could think of that would see the kid earning such a name was if he'd somehow ended up being bitten by the shark whose broken teeth were strung on the spear.

Shark bites were nasty business and shark attacks were one of the biggest reasons why shinobi rarely ever traveled over long stretches of the ocean's surface if they could avoid it. It was why Kirin had chosen not to shave a good eight hours travel time off of their journey to and from Kumo by crossing the ocean. The other reason why it was inadvisable to travel on the ocean's surface for any length of time was the unpredictability and viciousness of the year round tropical storms that often plagued the seas.

Inspection complete, Kakashi allowed Tora to hustle him out of the room without fuss; the teen clearly wanted to give the sleeping child a measure of privacy. Once outside of the room, the two teens approached the door directly across from Tora's room; which Kakashi already knew had been assigned to Kuma. The seventeen year old was a little surprised when the two teens didn't chase him right back out the moment he followed them into the room. He was also quite pleased as it allowed him to learn a little bit more about Kuma.

The first thing he noticed was the similarities between the two rooms. In fact, they were damn near identical except for the themes used in the decorating. Where Tora had otters, fish, and seaweed, Kuma had beavers, water lilies, and reeds.

The Mural on Kuma's wall was of a vast city that had been built in the center of the lake; a good two thirds of the buildings actually sitting beneath what appeared to be the water's surface in the artwork. The rug covering his floor was a simple rectangle with geometric designs woven into the pattern of the rug. The wooden screen that hid the toilet and shower contained a carving of the Hokage's tower, Tanzaku Castle, and a rather impressive dam. His coat rack was of a stocky beaver holding a trio of long handled hammers.

Instead of paintings hung on the wall beneath his bed, Kuma had a series of intricate wood carvings that were of several different historical buildings. The poster on the back of his door was of a rather grim looking haunted house and there was nothing hanging above the doorway. And the last difference was the fact that the sleeping platform growing out of the wall looked far more like a wooden bed frame that had been bolted to the wall rather than a nest made up of woven branches.

The two things about both rooms that really struck Kakashi was the fact that they had been highly personalized and they both felt lived in.

Two facts that supported his suspicions that Tora and Kuma lived in the building on a full time basis and had for several years given just how much work they'd done to the two rooms – the young captain temporarily forgetting that both fifteen year olds could use their Mokuton to create just about anything they might want in a matter of minutes. He also wasn't aware that the two teens cultivated the lived in appearance of their rooms in order to help deflect attention from their lives outside of the mask.

"Are you going to sit down and ask your questions, teichou; or were you planning to just stand there long enough to be mistaken for part of the décor?" Kuma inquired after Kakashi had finished his inspection of the room.

Kakashi blinked in surprise as he pulled his gaze from the mural of the underwater city to find the two teens seated on the woven reed rug with a pot of fresh tea and three steaming cups sitting on a small table in front of them.

* * *

**Translations:** Japanese to English

Baka – idiot  
Gaki – brat  
Hai – yes  
Same no Kouji – Shark Bait  
Teichou – captain

**Notes: **

Kojimaru's Kenjutsu – Part of the reason why Kojimaru's sword style looks so impressive is because he's been working on it for years and the other reason is because he's showing off. He's also fighting against his own clones, so he has a huge advantage against his opponents. So, he's not a super-powered swordsman; he's just good at putting on a show and like Kakashi had noticed in the story, there is still plenty of room for improvement. The other thing to keep in mind is the fact that Kojimaru's sword style when fighting alongside others would change to accommodate their presence and styles.

Friendly Banter – I just wanted to point out that the friendly/teasing banter between Kakashi and Kojimaru at the start of the story was just that; friendly banter. This is _**not**_ a Kakashi/Kojimaru story; just like it is not a Kojimaru/Tenzou story. The two of them were just teasing one another and Kojimaru was looking to embarrass Kakashi because he was slightly annoyed with him at the time. As I've said many times before, I don't write slash unless it is an offhand reference to a non-central pairing that won't be expanded upon. I have nothing against same-sex pairings but I just can't write them; and yes, I have tried (and failed… epically so).

* * *

**11-15-15:** _Minor edits made to chapter to fix spelling/grammar mistakes and removed unnecessary author's notes._


	28. The Revelations

**Disclaimer:** _All HP characters are the property of JKR, the WB, and respective publishing companies and all Naruto characters are the property of Masashi Kishimoto. This is nothing more than a simple FanFiction that I have written. I have made no money from this or any of the other stories I have posted on this or other sites._

**Warnings:** _Mild to moderate violence, character death, alternate universe (i.e. kiss canon goodbye), OCC behaviors and personalities, a number of original characters and obscure canon characters to flesh out family trees, random chosen last names to give a number of characters surnames, and who knows what else._

**AN:** _This story is self-beta'd; so there may be occasional grammatical or spelling errors that crop up every now and then and for those I apologize in advance._

* * *

Chapter Twenty-Eight: The Revelations

_October 11, 0295 AtD, 8:02 PM  
Konohagakure no Sato, Hi no Kuni_

Tenzou felt an urge to laugh at Inu as he easily pictured the older teen gaping at them from beneath his mask. It was nice to know that their captain was just as human as they were beneath his mask. It made him more approachable and less intimidating when you knew that he had actual emotions and a sense of humor beneath his cold exterior. There had been times when it had been hard for the fifteen year old to read the man; especially during the handful of training sessions the man had put the of them through.

Tenzou also hadn't missed Kojimaru's wariness around their captain; especially after their squad had played a key role in bringing down at least two spy rings inside of the village that had been working against Konoha. Out of the two of them, Kojimaru had always been the most hesitant when it came to trusting and accepting new people. The only strangers that were not automatically treated with suspicion by his green-eyed brother were children (unless they were bullies). The younger the child, the more likely it was that Kojimaru would tolerate their presence and allow them to freely invade his personal space.

Kojimaru's little stalker was actually the oldest child to date that his brother had accepted without spending weeks getting to know her. Part of that, Tenzou knew, had everything to do with the circumstances under which they had met Yugito. Tenzou disliked child abuse and child abusers but Kojimaru loathed them with a passion. Kick a stray dog and Kojimaru would kick you back; kick a child and Kojimaru was more likely to cut off your leg off and beat you to death with it.

That's not to say he killed anyone and everyone he saw pushing a kid around; he always made certain the one doing the pushing intended the child harm (and was not just disciplining the child – like when exasperated adults lightly slapped a kid upside the back of the head to knock a little sense in them or yelled at them because they did something stupid). He knew that adults also sometimes got frustrated and said or did things that they later regretted. It was only the ones that were truly cruel to children that Kojimaru punished without hesitation and without remorse.

Tenzou had no doubt that if they had not been on such a sensitive mission at the time, the two perverts molesting Yugito would not have survived beyond the time it took for Kojimaru to kill them. And it was entirely possible that the two men might have ended up dead anyway; the two of them had left a pair of clones behind to tie up any loose ends that would have given away their many identities and Kojimaru could have easily instructed his clone to hunt down the two perverts and kill them with extreme prejudice. If he hadn't, then Tenzou was going to have to keep a close eye on his brother to make certain he didn't send a clone to take care of that oversight since it would create problems if it was caught.

The dark eyed teen was drawn from his thoughts at that point as Inu cautiously sat down and asked, "I thought you said Kasai had forbidden you from making your own tea when you were in the facility or from asking someone else to make it for you?"

"He did," Kojimaru replied around a sip of said tea. "But he also never said I couldn't accept a cup of tea that someone else offered to make for me or that I couldn't brew my tea outside of the Facility and bring it back with me. He knows better than to make any attempts to take away my tea entirely. All he did was to make it so that I had to put a bit more effort into acquiring my tea."

"You enjoy skirting the rules, don't you?"

"Yes; stupid rules were meant to be ignored or broken. That and Kasai's restrictions were less about punishing me in order to cause me discomfort or pain and more about making a point that I need to be more careful in the future because the next time I stupidly make the same mistake, it might not end so well."

"And just who is it that gets to decide which rules are stupid and which ones aren't?"

"A little something called common sense. An example of a stupid rule would be to have a rule that says it is against the law for a civilian to own a knife. How would butchers manage to butcher the meat they sell without knives? How would restaurant chefs cut up ingredients without them? Knives are used just as much in every day life by civilians as they are by shinobi (if not more so); meaning a law that prevented them from owning knives would be stupid. Another example would be a law that stated that only men are allowed to be shinobi because women are supposedly weaker than men. And for the record, I don't go out of my way to break rules or laws; I don't see myself as being above the law."

"That's good to know."

"So, are you going to ask us the questions you had about us and our pasts that my brother mentioned to me earlier or have you changed your mind?" Tenzou asked again as he pushed the final cup of tea closer to Inu.

"Will either of you answer my questions if I do ask them? I'm aware that neither one of you fully trust me yet; even if you were actually willing to allow me to see your face earlier, Kuma."

Tenzou snorted softly as he cast a glance sideways at Kojimaru; he should have known his brother would have balked at taking off his mask in front of Inu. Then again, Kojimaru's face was far more memorable than Tenzou's own face and not just because of his eyes, dark hair, and pale skin. Kojimaru's facial structure was rather unique and the only scar his brother carried could be found on his brow in the form of a thin, mostly faded, jagged line that sat just over his right eyebrow. Kojimaru's hitai-ate usually hid the scar from view but his brother didn't like wearing his hitai-ate beneath his mask because it created a small pocket of air between his mask and skin that he claimed grew uncomfortably warm.

"We will answer some of your questions now and the rest in time as we grow more comfortable around you," Tenzou finally replied after Kojimaru shifted his shoulders in an aborted shrug that said he would trust Tenzou and take his cues from him. "It would also be nice if you offered up a bit of information about yourself in return as well; especially if you want us to trust you. I'll also admit to being curious as to who you are beneath your mask."

"You didn't tell him who I was after you figured it out?" Inu asked in shock as he snapped his one eyed gaze over to stare at the shorter boy in surprise.

"It wasn't my secret to tell and while I don't keep secrets from Kuma, I also don't gossip with him about other people's secrets that I learn nor does he gossip with me about other people's secrets that he's stumbled on. Most times it doesn't matter in any case because we're usually together when we uncover any dirt on other people."

"Okay, that was a bit of a surprise since I assumed you both wouldn't hesitate to share everything you learned with one another, even if you didn't tell anyone else," Inu replied as he reached up to remove his porcelain dog mask. "And I am willing to share bits and pieces of my life in order to help us establish a modicum of trust between us. Normally, I'd insist that Taka be here as well but I have him researching a few things in the library right now. Do you recognize me, Kuma; or do I need to introduce myself?"

"You are Jounin Hatake Kakashi, age seventeen; also known as Sharingan no Kakashi and Kopi Ninja no Kakashi in at least six Bingo Books and the former student of Namikaze Minato," Tenzou offered before he too removed his mask.

Kojimaru huffed slightly but didn't hesitate to remove his mask as well and Tenzou couldn't help but laugh when he got his first look at the skull that Kojimaru had formed over his face to hide himself while his mask was off. He would bet his entire paycheck that his brother had been wearing that face since Inoichi had viewed his brother's memories of the Kumo mission.

"Inoichi screamed like a girl and jumped when he first saw me," Kojimaru stated with a soft snicker when he briefly caught Tenzou's eye as he reached up to run the fingers of both hands through his hair momentarily in an effort to tame his perpetually messy locks.

"Wish I could have seen that," Tenzou lamented; despite being a seasoned shinobi, Inoichi was far too easy to startle sometimes and Kojimaru took perverse enjoyment out of shocking the Yamanaka Clan Head every chance he got and the only one whose nose he enjoyed tweaking more was Shikaku's because the lazy Nara was far harder to shock.

Kojimaru snickered a second time before he glanced at the partially unmasked Kakashi (he hadn't removed the cloth mask, after all) and gave voice to a near silent sigh of resignation as his posture deflated and Tenzou knew his brother was going to drop the disguise he was wearing. He also knew that Kojimaru was only doing it because Tenzou had not hesitated to bare his face first. Tenzou felt a small twinge of guilt for unintentionally pressuring his brother but it passed almost before it fully formed when Kojimaru reached out to briefly touch his knee; a silent reaffirmation that his brother trusted his decision despite the reservations Kojimaru obviously still felt.

Kojimaru then reached up to run a hand over his face in order to dissolve the paper-thin layer of wood that formed the disguise and Tenzou actually heard their captain suck in a soft breath of surprise. A discreet glance at the older teen revealed him to be wearing an expression of genuine surprise while his visible eye intently scanned Kojimaru's face as if he was attempting to match a name to his face.

"I don't recognize either of you," Kakashi finally admitted once he had finished his visual inspection and recovered his aplomb. "I thought for sure that I would be able to figure out who you were the moment I saw your faces but I don't recognize you at all. Will you tell me your names?"

"You already know our names," Tenzou stated as he sensed that Kojimaru was in no way ready to trust their captain with the names of their hidden identities just yet. "I am Kuma and my brother is Tora."

"Yes, I know your ANBU code names but I was hoping you'd give me your real names."

"These faces have never had any other name than the names that we were given when we finally earned our masks last year," Kojimaru stated in a flat tone.

"No other names…?" Kakashi repeated as his brow furrowed just the slightest bit while his eye flicked back and forth between the two fifteen year olds. "Are you implying that I am not currently seeing your natural faces? And what about the name your parents gave you when you were born?"

"No, these are the faces we were born with," Tenzou countered as he eyed his brother critically; bringing up names and parents in the same breath had a high probability of making Kojimaru rather irritable or broody – depending on the context used. "As for any name our parents may or may not have given us when we were born; we wouldn't know. We were orphaned at a fairly young age and have little to no memory of our parents."

"I remember the color red," Kojimaru whispered as he stared at something only he could see. "A dark red that was the color of freshly spilled blood and an acid green light. Everything else was lost in the endless haze of burning, stabbing pain. Whoever I was when I was born died long before I saw an end to the pain."

Tenzou silently refilled Kojimaru's cup and pressed it into his hands. This wasn't the first time he had heard his brother speak of blood and green lights or the pain they'd both suffered at the hands of Orochimaru and he knew those disjointed memories still bothered Kojimaru far more than he let on. This was the first time he ever heard Kojimaru speak of those memories in front of another though; he wasn't even certain that Kojimaru had told Kosuke about those memories. He'd never asked.

In order to give his brother time to collect himself, Tenzou drew Kakashi's attention away from him by asking, "What else did you wish to know, Hatake-san?"

"Please call me Kakashi when I'm not wearing my ANBU mask," Kakashi instructed as he swung his gaze back towards Tenzou. "I asked Tora this earlier but he declined to answer without consulting you first; who is it that the two of you are hiding from?"

"Why do you want to know?"

"I don't like going into a mission blind and I'd like to have time to research any possible threats to my squad before they sneak up on us out of the blue while we are outside of the village. I should also point out that I can't help the two of you protect yourselves very well if I don't even know who or what it is I'm supposed to be protecting you from. On top of that, the moment you were officially assigned to my squad, your enemies became my enemies by association."

Tenzou nodded in acceptance but hesitated to answer as he cast a sideways glance beside him at Kojimaru in order to gauge his reaction to the question. He and his brother had already discussed the matter between them while they played with Yugito and they had agreed that it was probably best to come clean with their captain; if only because of the threat that Orochimaru represented to their entire squad due to their presence. He had not anticipated his brother falling into a broody silence quite so early in the conversation though and it made Tenzou a little less certain that they'd made the right decision.

"Orochimaru," Kojimaru unexpectedly answered without looking up from his tea and Tenzou actually had to hide his shock; he had not expected Kojimaru to offer up an answer when he (Tenzou) had hesitated.

"Oro…? Demo, what could you possible have done to make an enemy of that traitor? You couldn't have been more than two or three years old when he was chased out of the village and I know that he was not once sighted during the course of the Third Great Shinobi War. Knowing that, I can't imagine any reason why Orochimaru could possibly want either of you dead."

"We were three and a half," Tenzou corrected as he stopped second guessing his and Kojimaru's decision to confide in their captain now that Kojimaru had set the kunai flying. "We were a large part of the reason why he was chased out of the village at the time. And you will not have to worry about trying to keep Orochimaru from killing us if he should find out we still live. He is far more likely to kidnap us instead."

"I feel like I am missing something here," Kakashi stated as he ran a hand through his hair in agitation. "Why would the traitor want to kidnap you? Is it because of your Kekkei Genkai?"

"Do you know why Orochimaru was declared a traitor and chased out of the village?" Kojimaru asked as he set his untouched second cup of tea on the table; a clear sign that his brother was far more uncomfortable with the current topic than he outwardly appeared.

"Of course I know why Orochimaru was declared a traitor; all ANBU Operatives are required to study the basic overview of the crimes that those individuals who have been declared traitors to the village during their first six months in the Corps."

"And…?" Kojimaru prompted; his brother forcing their captain to work things out for himself instead of just spelling it out for him.

"Orochimaru was chased out of the village and declared a traitor after the Sandaime Hokage discovered his former student had been experimenting… on… humans…" Kakashi began in a strong voice that grew quieter before trailing off completely by the end of his reply as he finally drew the conclusion that the two teens had led him to. "No, that's not possible; all of the records pertaining to that night said there were no survivors found."

"True," Tenzou agreed with a nod. "And all of the records from three years ago, state that the Yondaime Hokage killed the Kyuubi before he died from his wounds." The fact that all three of them knew that the records from the night of the Kyuubi's attack were not entirely accurate was left unspoken.

"How…?"

"Kasai… or rather Kasai's predecessor, Akimichi Torifu, made us disappear."

Kakashi sat in stunned silence for several minutes before he hesitantly inquired, "Did Orochimaru actually experiment on the two of you?"

"The answer to that question should be obvious," Kojimaru stated as he held up his hand and formed a twisted kunai out of a mixture of ice and wood. "You asked me earlier how it was possible for Kuma and I to be brothers in blood if we didn't share a common parent and the answer to that question can be found in the answer to the question you just asked us."

"In other words, teichou; we weren't actually born with our Kekkei Genkai," Tenzou further explained as he caught sight of the slightly uncomfortable expression on Kakashi's face despite the cloth mask that hid the lower half of seventeen year old's face. "Well, I wasn't born with a Kekkei Genkai."

"Is that why the two of you only share two Kekkei Genkai instead of all three? Because Tora had been born with the Hyouton?"

"Yes, but he was not born with the Hyouton; his inborn Kekkei Genkai is his advanced healing ability."

"But the two of you share that Kekkei Genkai," Kakashi half protested before he blanched as he immediately realized what that meant. "Orochimaru used that. He tried to recreate that ability in the same way that he tried to recreate other bloodline limits; only it didn't quite work because you didn't gain the full ability. That's why your healing ability is so weak when compared to Tora's."

"Correct," Tenzou confirmed as he picked up Kojimaru's cup of tea on the table and pressed it into his brother's trembling hands. "I have no doubt that the only reason why I survived was because I had Tora's blood flowing through my veins by the time Orochimaru implanted the Mokuton within me."

"What exactly did he do to the two of you? How did he…?"

"Do you really need to know?" Tenzou countered with a frown as he interrupted Kakashi the moment he noticed that Kojimaru had spilled some of his tea when he flinched in response to the first question.

His brother remembered far more of what had been done to them because his healing ability had actually worked against him by making all attempts to keep him unconscious less effective; meaning Kojimaru had woken up far more often and after a far shorter period of time. Unlike the disjointed memories from his life before Orochimaru and the experiments, Kojimaru never spoke of those memories. He had made veiled references to them but he never spoke of what he could remember unless he summed it up in one word; pain.

"No, I suppose I don't. Can you tell me about any health related problems I should be aware of as a result of whatever it was he did to the two of you? There are bound to be times when one or both of you will be injured while we are on a mission and knowing what I should and should not do when it comes to treating your injuries could well save your life."

Happy at the slight change in Kakashi's line of questioning, Tenzou didn't hesitate to answer, "Well, for starters, due to the changes that Orochimaru made to our D.N.A. during the experiments, Tora and I can't be given blood transfusions from anyone but each other despite the fact that we both originally had a blood type of AB positive. The same applies to organ transplants. Because of that, we are required to provide the ANBU infirmary with two pints of blood every six months in order to insure that they always have a decent size supply of our blood on hand in case it is needed. It would also be inadvisable to give anyone else a transfusion using our blood for much the same reason."

"The next thing you need to watch out for is improperly set broken bones; that is doubly important for Tora since his Kekkei Genkai will not shift a misaligned bone back into its proper place before it heals it; it will just heal it right as is, leaving the bone deformed. If that does happen, the bone will either need to be rebroken so it can be set properly or he'll need surgery to remove the deformation. The other thing you have to watch out for is foreign objects being sealed inside of his body if they are not removed before his Kekkei Genkai heals the surrounding tissue. It's not that big of deal if the object is sticking out above the skin but it can be a huge problem if, say, a broken kunai tip gets lodged in a bone."

"Is there anything your healing ability can't heal, Tora?"

"We don't know if it will regrow amputated limbs," Tenzou answered when Kojimaru just shrugged. "It will heal damaged organs and damaged bones but it takes longer. It is also not very effective against chemical based poisons but has no problems clearing out plant and mineral based poisons as well as animal and insect venoms. Being poisoned won't kill him but it can make him very sick. That is also the strongest aspect of my second-hand healing ability. I tend to be far more affected by the poison and it takes longer for it to clear my system but I most likely won't die if I am poisoned."

"Does that ability extend to medications?"

"Yes and no, most medications tend to work with our healing ability but chemical based medications are far less effective than herbal and homeopathic remedies. It also depends on how far we've drained our chakra reserves and how severe our wounds are since the more damage our ability is required to heal, the more chakra the healing requires. That is especially true for me since my reserves don't recover as quickly as Tora's do."

"Can either of you use iryojutsu? Or use your healing Kekkei Genkai to heal others?"

"No, our healing ability has no true physical form that we can pull up like we can with our elemental natures. We were taught emergency first aide though."

"I suspected as much based upon what skills were listed in your file but I wanted to be certain. Is there anything else I should know?"

"Not that I can think of off of the top of my head; except maybe the fact that we are less likely to catch any of the more common seasonal illnesses like a cold or the flu."

"Actually there is one more thing you should know; my normal body temperature is several degrees lower than the usual average body temperature," Kojimaru countered in a quiet voice as he spoke up for the first time since Kakashi had flat out asked if Orochimaru had experimented on them.

"How low are we talking about?"

"On average, around ninety degrees Fahrenheit but it can drop as low as eighty-two degrees Fahrenheit. You won't have to worry about me suffering from hypothermia unless my temperature drops below seventy-eight degrees Fahrenheit though. Conversely, if my temperature rises over ninety-two degrees Fahrenheit, then I become overheated. Anything over ninety-four degrees Fahrenheit could potentially be a serious problem if it lasts longer than a half an hour. I usually use my Hyouton to regulate my body temperature to keep myself from overheating."

"I take it you don't visit the hot springs very often, do you?"

"Actually, I do. I just never stay in the water for very long because I dislike the heat. The only thing I never do is sit in a sauna because breathing in the hot air is ten times worse than soaking in a pool of hot water. It's also the reason why I don't like to be touched; the difference between my body temperature and everyone else's is uncomfortable and prolonged contact always makes it worse."

"Anything else?" Kakashi inquired once it became apparent that neither younger teen was going to add anything further.

"No, that should be it."

"Okay, what theories have the two of you come up with since this morning after Tora's precocious little stray revealed that the Nibi is attracted to him?"

"Senju Hashirama's ability to 'tame' the bijuu is well documented in the village histories," Kojimaru pointed out. "It is entirely possible that whatever it was that corrupted my chakra and my Kekkei Genkai corrupted that ability enough that it acts like a form of catnip for the bijuu. Then again, I've always had a fairly close connection with most animals and the bijuu have been known to exhibit animal-like mentalities and habits even though they are not true animals."

"Can you give me an example?"

"How familiar are you with the deer that the Nara keep and raise on their estate?" Kojimaru asked in return.

"Their antlers have healing properties, they are notoriously intolerant of outsiders, and even trained ninken are wary of trespassing on their territory. Why?"

"I used to ride on the backs of the adult stags, play tag with the yearlings, and could approach the newborn fawns with impunity when I was younger. I still visit the herds when I have time to spare. And no, I don't have even a single drop of Nara blood running through my veins. In fact, I'm pretty certain that I wasn't born in Konoha or anywhere else in Hi no Kuni. I do know for certain that I am not related to any of Konoha's clans or any clans from those villages with which Konoha is allied. Actually, I don't think they ever managed to pinpoint my origins and Orochimaru didn't exactly leave a detailed account of where he found me or how he got his hands on me."

Kakashi stared at Kojimaru for a long moment before he asked, "How is it that no one really knows anything about the two of you? I mean, this… this is huge! Someone, somewhere had to have witnessed something if you've been regularly leaving the village on missions since you earned your hitai-ate. How...? How is it possible that no one stumbled on the truth about your existence? How did your Kekkei Genkai not get noticed by clients and enemies alike?"

"There were a few people that noticed but a teammate of ours was trained to manipulate memories in order to make people forget they saw anything they shouldn't have and our assigned Jounin sensei never mentioned our abilities in his reports by order of Kasai… or rather Torifu," Tenzou replied as Kakashi swung his gaze back to the brown-eyed teen the moment he started speaking. "There are a few people that were allowed to know for various reasons. There actually used to be far more people that were aware of us but a good number of them died either during the war or during the Kyuubi's attack."

Kakashi stared at Tenzou for a minute longer before he frowned, shifted his gaze back to Kojimaru, and asked, "Tora, earlier, after you'd asked me why I had selected the two of you to join my squad, you had mentioned something about assuming that someone had told me who you two were and that that was why you thought I had requested to have the two of you placed on my squad. Who was it that you were referring to and why did you think that person would have had any reason to tell me who the two of you were?"

"I thought Namikaze-sama would have told you about us because you were his student," Kojimaru replied after a brief moment of hesitation.

"Oh, I can see why you would think that. Does that mean that you were close to Minato-sensei? Or did the Sandaime tell him about the two of you when he was sworn into office?"

"No, we weren't close to him and it was Torifu who had told Namikaze-sama about us just before he was sworn in as the Yondaime," Kojimaru slowly replied as he stared deeply into his cup of tea while he swirled the contents. "And that was only because we took part in the siege near the end of the war roughly five years ago."

"I take it that Inoichi also knows who you both are?"

"Hai, he's known about us since we were first found. So has Shikaku and Chouza," Tenzou answered as he dug out a bag of candied walnuts and offered some to both Kojimaru and Kakashi before popping a couple into his own mouth.

"Kasai and Kirin obviously know both of you as well," Kakashi mused after he chewed and swallowed the walnuts he'd somehow managed to slip beneath his mask without either younger boy noticing. "I'm curious though, why weren't the two of you assigned to Kirin's squad? I mean, it's kind of obvious that he is your handler based upon the way the three of you interacted with one another during our joint mission."

"He's not our handler; we were never assigned a handler," Kojimaru stated when Tenzou froze up in response to Kakashi bringing up his adoptive uncle. "Though, Torifu would have qualified, I suppose; since he ultimately made all of the decisions pertaining to mine and Kuma's placement and training. I guess that would mean that Kasai sort of inherited the position as our handler in some respects since he basically picked up where Torifu left off."

"But then how do the two of you know Kirin?"

"He was one of our first trainers," Tenzou improvised after he managed to stamp down hard on his momentary panic thanks to Kojimaru deflecting Kakashi's attention. And it wasn't as if his claim was a lie, Kisuke had been one of their first trainers; he was just so much more than _just_ a trainer to both of them.

"Ah, my mistake," Kakashi murmured in response though Tenzou wasn't certain whether or not he fully believed them or if he was just humoring them. "So, how old were you two when you earned your hitai-ate?"

"Almost six," Tenzou and Kojimaru replied in unison.

"Chuunin…?"

"Six," both fifteen year olds answered in unison once more.

"How…?"

"Field promotion less than six months later," Tenzou explained while Kojimaru finally gave the cup of tea in his hand his complete attention now that the discussion had drifted into a less stressful direction.

"Jounin…?"

"Tokubetsu Jounin, and that was only about six or seven months ago. Right after we completed our ANBU training."

"Ah, and I know the two of you have been working with the ANBU Corps off and on since you were at least ten; since I remember you both taking part in the siege you mentioned earlier."

"Something like that, though we really didn't start doing any serious training until after my twelfth birthday," Kojimaru commented off-handedly. "Will you tell us how you got your Sharingan?"

Tenzou nearly choked on a walnut and Kakashi actually spilt tea down the front of his uniform in response to that question. Once he'd cleared his windpipe of the half walnut, Tenzou shot Kojimaru a look of disbelief because the green-eyed teen was not usually so forward. Then again, Kakashi had been prying rather deeply into their history and Kojimaru was undoubtedly feeling more than a little vulnerable because of that.

"I suppose I should have expected you to ask that question given what I was asking you to share with me," Kakashi stated after he'd made a half-hearted attempt to clean his uniform. "I don't particularly enjoy thinking about that day because that memory is one of my worst memories. But I did say I would share some of my history."

The older teen paused for a moment to center his thoughts before he explained, "Towards the end of the war, the kunoichi on our team was captured during a critical mission and I was ready to abandon her until my other teammate knocked some sense into me, so to speak, before he took off to rescue her himself. I hesitated to follow him and barely caught up in time to save him from the shinobi that was guarding the Iwa camp. I lost my left eye in that fight and Uchiha Obito, my teammate, activated his Sharingan."

"We then moved to deal with the second shinobi together. We somehow managed to free our teammate but the Iwa shinobi destroyed the earth cave they'd been using as their base while we were still inside. Obito sacrificed himself at that point to save me when he pushed me out of the way of a large boulder that I hadn't seen because it came from my blind side. As Obito lay dying, he ordered Nohara Rin, our teammate and our team's medic, to replace my damaged left eye with his left eye."

"He said it was his congratulatory gift to me for being promoted to Jounin just before we left on that mission. Rin and I were then forced to leave him to die alone in order to escape the trap as the Iwa shinobi tried to finish destroying the base after he realized he hadn't killed us all the first time. I eventually killed the man that had killed Obito but Minato still had to bail Rin and I out of a mess as a small platoon of Iwa shinobi had turned up at the base shortly after it had been destroyed."

"The Uchiha were not pleased that Obito had given me his eye but the Sandaime and Minato stonewalled their attempts to have Obito's eye extracted or have me executed for bloodline theft," Kakashi finished as he wiped his hand over his face, nearly dislodging his cloth face mask in the process.

"You still blame yourself for his death," Tenzou blurted out before he could censor his mouth.

"Yeah, I probably always will. He… while he was alive, Obito and I were not the best of friends and I considered him beneath me because he had graduated at the bottom of the class. He was also an annoying clown that could never take anything seriously and at the time I lived by the rule book. We could have been friends but my pride and my false belief in my own superiority prevented me from seeing him as anything but a loser. I'll never forget the words he told me the day he died."

"I had always told him that those who broke the rules were trash and just before he rushed off to save Rin by himself, he looked at me and told me that those who break the rules might be trash but that those who abandoned their friends and teammates were worse than trash. He was also the first person to call my father a true hero because of my father's decision to abandon his mission to save his teammates. The rest of the village blamed my father for the war because of his choice and for the longest time I believed my father to be a fool and a coward because he killed himself in shame."

Silence settled over the three teens at that point, each one of them lost in their thoughts and the past. After a while, Kojimaru tentatively inquired, "What happened to Rin?"

"If you want me to talk about Rin, I'm going to need something far stronger than tea to drink and you're going to have to wait until we are not on duty," Kakashi replied with a sharp flinch that spoke volumes about what had potentially happened to the kunoichi.

"Okay, I am sorry for prying," Kojimaru contritely murmured.

"Don't worry, Shark Bait, I didn't take any offense; you just happened to pick the one topic that is even harder for me to talk about than the story of how I ended up with my teammate's Sharingan."

Kojimaru huffed in response to the use of that nickname but made no effort to retaliate despite his earlier threats each time the older teen had called him that nickname. His brother then abruptly climbed to his feet, slipped his mask over his face, and disappeared through the door to check on Yugito, leaving Kakashi a little confused and worried.

"I didn't just piss him off because I used that nickname again, did I?" Kakashi asked nervously as he glanced between the door and Kojimaru's now empty seat.

"No, he went to check on Yugito. He is also feeling guilty about causing you pain with his questions and he felt it best to retreat for a moment in order to sort himself out. Tora does not usually pry into other people's business but he has been off balance since we learned the identity of his little stalker and heard that the Nibi is drawn to him. On top of that, he is feeling rather insecure because of how much of our past we shared with you. My brother is not a very trusting person, Kakashi-san, and I was actually rather shocked that he agreed to share as much as he did tonight."

"Part of that, no doubt, had a lot to do with your earlier statement that you would be willing to share parts of your own history. I am also pretty certain that another part of the reason he shared so much was because Inoichi-san and Kasai-sama both advised him to trust you because they trust you," Tenzou finished as he set about making another pot of tea for when Kojimaru returned.

"And what about you? Why did you agree to share your history with me?"

"Because you have not given me any reason not to trust you. I also trust Kasai-sama's judgment and he would not have chosen you as our prospective captain if he did not think he could trust you with us."

"Fair enough," Kakashi replied with a nod. "Was there anything else you wished to ask me?"

"Yeah, did you sign a summoning contract at the end of your six month mandatory ANBU training?"

"Hai, I have a conditional contract with eight ninken from the Dog Clan. What about you? Did you also sign the Otter Contract?"

"No, I signed the Beaver Contract. The Beaver Clan and Otter Clan have close ties though, so Tora and I have actually trained and spent time with both clans. Does Tora know that you have a contract with the Dogs?"

"I am not sure, why?"

"Because he's going to need to know so that he can warn the Otters about your contract since we have no idea if either of our summonses would be willing to work with the Dog Clan or not. Does Taka have a contract as well?"

"No, Taka chose not to sign a contract when he finished his training a couple of years before I joined the Corps. I will speak to my pack and make sure there won't be any conflicts between them and your associated summonses since any issues they might have with each other will only create problems during a mission if they refuse to cooperate. Was that all you needed to know?"

"Iie," Kojimaru answered as he slid out of the table in the middle of floor; his sudden appearance making Kakashi throw himself back in shock because it had not been expected.

"Chikushou! How long have you been hiding in there!?" Kakashi demanded in an annoyed growl after both fifteen year olds had openly snickered at him in response to his reaction.

"I wasn't hiding; I just got back and hadn't felt like using the door."

"Gaki," Kakashi growled half-heartedly as he resettled himself at the table before he asked, "What did you want to know?"

"Our guard schedule for the next seven to fourteen days."

"I didn't already give that to you?" Kakashi asked as he rubbed at the back of his head and both boys gave him a look of disbelief. "Ah, right. I guess not. I'll figure something out in the morning. For now, I need you both to key me into the security barriers on your rooms before you two get some rest and then I'll camp out in the hallway to watch over the girl for the rest of the night so that the two of you can get some rest."

Six minutes later, Tenzou and Kojimaru were sharing his bed for the second night in a row since Kojimaru's bed was currently occupied by a certain blonde turned brunette.

* * *

**Translations:** Japanese to English

Chikushou – damn  
Demo – but  
Gaki – brat  
Hai – yes  
Iie – no

**Notes: **

Tenzou's blood type – as I mentioned at the start of the fic, I am aware that canon Tenzou/Yamato's blood type is A (Rh factor unspecified) but I used creative license to change his blood type to match Harry/Kojimaru's blood type. I chose to have them both be universal receivers in order to have an underlying reason why they survived the experiments while so many other subjects did not. As universal receivers, their bodies did not reject the implanted Kekkei Genkai because there were no conflicts like there would have been in other blood types if they received the wrong type of blood.

I almost made Harry a universal donor but then that would have meant he couldn't have realistically received a blood transfusion from another blood type. Also, the reason why they can no longer be considered universal receivers (as they can not be given transfusions of any blood other than their own or each other's) will be explained later in the story.

* * *

**11-15-15:** _Minor edits made to chapter to fix spelling/grammar mistakes and removed unnecessary author's notes._


	29. The Bonding

**Disclaimer:** _All HP characters are the property of JKR, the WB, and respective publishing companies and all Naruto characters are the property of Masashi Kishimoto. This is nothing more than a simple FanFiction that I have written. I have made no money from this or any of the other stories I have posted on this or other sites._

**Warnings:** _Mild to moderate violence, character death, alternate universe (i.e. kiss canon goodbye), OCC behaviors and personalities, a number of original characters and obscure canon characters to flesh out family trees, random chosen last names to give a number of characters surnames, and who knows what else._

**AN:** _This story is self-beta'd; so there may be occasional grammatical or spelling errors that crop up every now and then and for those I apologize in advance._

* * *

Chapter Twenty-Nine: The Bonding

_October 13, 0295 AtD, 08:02 PM  
Konohagakure no Sato, Hi no Kuni_

Kakashi created a Kage Bunshin and ordered it to stand guard for the next hour outside of Tora's room where the eleven year old Yugito had just been tucked into bed for the fourth night in a row by the green-eyed teen. Taka followed suit a moment later; the older man providing a Doton Bunshin. Kakashi then stepped across the hall to Kuma's assigned room where he knew both fifteen year olds were waiting for them. He rapped on the door twice to announce their presence before he opened the door without waiting for one of them to answer.

The seventeen year old captain was unsurprised to find the younger of the two teens comfortably seated at a small table in the middle of the floor the moment he stepped into the room. He was, on the other hand, rather surprised to find the table set for a formal tea ceremony with Kuma patiently seated on the left hand side of the table while he sensed Tora hovering behind the wooden screen that blocked off the shower stall and toilet. After a moment, Kakashi let out a silent snort; he should have known that the green-eyed gaki regularly hosted and undoubtedly attended tea ceremonies given his obsession with tea.

Stepping to one side, Kakashi held the door open for Taka to enter the room before he shut the door and took a seat on the floor beside Kuma while Taka sat to his right. As soon as the two of them were settled, Kakashi reached up and removed his porcelain dog mask. Taka and Kuma were both quick to follow his example and Kakashi wondered whether or not Tora would be wearing his mask when he stepped out from behind the screen. He received his answer a moment later when Tora walked out from behind the screen wearing a formal kimono that was dark brown in color, a tan obi, and a life-like porcelain face mask that had been cast with realistic features that were near identical to Kuma's face.

As he crossed the short distance separated the screened off bathroom area, it was very obvious to Kakashi that Tora was studying the partially unmasked Toriichi Kumade. Like Kakashi, Kumade covered the lower half of his face with a cloth face mask. He also had short, neatly spiked gray hair that was several shades darker than Kakashi's pale hair and eyes that were a uniform reddish brown. By the time the teen took his seat at the table, his inspection was complete and the teen turned his entire focus to the tea ceremony he was performing.

Over the course of the next half hour, Kakashi found himself rather impressed at how well Tora performed his duties as the host for the tea ceremony. It was quite obvious that he'd been formally trained and most likely from a very young age given how confident and graceful he was in his performance. That knowledge had Kakashi wondering if the teen worked in any of the tea houses during his days off. He was half tempted to visit the tea houses to check but eventually decided against it since it would take him too long to visit every single tea house. Not to mention how much such an undertaking would cost him.

Once the ceremony was over, Tora quickly cleaned up and put away the ceremonial utensils while Kuma switched the tables out using his Mokuton so that the four of them could spread out around the table in order to allow them to see one another more clearly. Tora then dropped the disguise he'd been wearing (much to Kakashi's surprise as he'd been certain that the teen was wearing a real kimono) to reveal the standard ANBU uniform and familiar tiger mask. As he retook his seat, Tora poured out additional cups of ordinary tea and produced an assortment of homemade treats for them to snack on.

The green-eyed teen then eyed Kumade for a moment before he hesitantly reached up to remove his ANBU mask and Kakashi couldn't help but let out a snort of amusement when the teen's face was revealed; the gaki was wearing a cloth mask over the bottom half of his face and a matching headband over his forehead. Only, instead of a solid black mask like Kakashi and Kumade were wearing, the teen had on a white mask with a tea-leaf motif printed over it. Combined with the partially hidden headband that covered his forehead, the mask made it near impossible to get a good look at Tora's actual face since only his eyes were readily visible. On his left, Kuma was snickering softly under his breath and shaking his head at Tora's disguise.

Kakashi half opened his mouth to ask Tora if he really thought it was necessary to hide his face from his teammates before he closed it as he realized how hypocritical the question was; after all, he and Kumade were both still hiding half of their faces from the other two. In fact, Kakashi hadn't shown the lower half of his face to anyone in ten years. Not even Minato-sensei had ever seen his bare face; and the man had made numerous attempts after he'd become Kakashi's Jounin sensei.

It was actually Minato's attempts to sneak a peek at his face that had inspired Kakashi to wear multiple masks with the bottom most mask attached to his face with a specialized seal that would prevent it from being removed by anyone but himself. Those same attempts had also inspired Kakashi to design a handful of seals that would allow him to eat or drink in public without taking off his mask unless he chose to. (Something he occasionally did to flummox those who were attempting to see his face since he inevitably waited for them to look away before pulling his mask down.)

With that in mind, Kakashi ignored the somewhat silly mask Tora was wearing as he listened to Kumade introduce himself to the two teens, "The name's Toriichi Kumade; twenty year old Tokubetsu Jounin and six year veteran ANBU Operative."

"It is a pleasure to formally meet you, senpai," Kuma stated while Tora simply nodded in agreement.

"So, which one of you two are going to introduce yourselves first now that I've broken the ice?" Kumade inquired as he glanced expectantly at Tora before swinging his gaze towards Kuma.

Kuma blinked at Kumade a couple of times before he stated, "You already know us; I am Kuma and that is Tora. We are both fifteen and we are both Tokubetsu Jounin as well."

"Ano…"

"We were nothing but nameless orphans when we were first found by Konoha, senpai," Kuma interjected before Kumade could fully form his question and Kakashi didn't miss the concerned look that the brown-eyed teen had thrown in Tora's direction.

Seeing that look reminded Kakashi that Tora had been far more affected by their discussion two nights earlier. Flicking his eyes back towards Tora, Kakashi wondered if the green-eyed teen was just more emotional than Kuma or if there was another reason why the slightly older boy was more affected by their shared histories.

"Are you implying that you don't have names outside of your ANBU codenames? Doesn't that bother you?"

"No, but it is more than a little annoying when people become overly focused on the fact that we have no memory of the names our parents christened us with when we were born or on our complete lack of heritage," Kuma calmly explained while he again eyed Tora with concern as the other teen hunched his shoulders.

"Complete lack of heritage…?" Kumade repeated with confusion and Kakashi just knew that the older man was going to say something that the two teens would find offensive. "How can you say that when you are both obviously part of the Senju Clan?"

"We are not Senju," Tora stated in a quiet voice devoid of all emotion.

Kumade opened his mouth to ask another question and Kakashi quickly stopped him from pursuing that particular topic with a quick kick from beneath the low table they were sitting at before he himself asked, "You know, there was something I've been meaning to ask you after the first time I saw your rooms; where did the two of you get your non-regulation furniture from?"

"I made them," Kuma admitted with more than a little relief over the topic change. "Well, I made all of the pieces except Tora's nest, he grew that himself, and the rugs and murals were gifts from the Beaver Clan."

"Why did both of you receive gifts from one of the summoning clans the two of you contracted to but not the other one?"

"I never said the Otter Clan didn't give us both gifts," Kuma corrected with a shark-like grin.

"So, what did the otters give the two of you?" Kumade inquired curiously when the teen said nothing further.

"A few really nice _toys_," Tora blandly answered after taking a sip of his tea.

"Toys…? Would one of those 'toys' happen to be hanging above the door in your room, Tora?" Kakashi asked as he noted the slight emphasis that the teen had placed on the word toys.

If he had not been watching Tora's face closely, Kakashi would have missed the way the leaf patterned face mask shifted minutely as the green-eyed teen grimaced at the reference to the bloodied harpoon hanging above his door. The soft snicker from Kuma drew a pouting glare from Tora before the teen dropped his gaze to the cup of tea he cradled in his hands and muttered, "No, that's a reminder I was given by my otter mentor."

"That sounds like an interesting story," Kakashi commented lightly.

"I'm far more curious to see these toys he mentioned," Kumade interjected with amusement.

The two teens held another one of their short, silent conversations at that point before Kuma rose to his feet and headed for his desk to dig out a large scroll that was one foot long, three inches thick, and bound with a length of braided marsh grasses. The teen brought the scroll back to the table and Kakashi caught a brief whiff of sea salt as Kuma untied the complicated knot holding the scroll shut before he unrolled two feet of the scroll to reveal a row of storage seals. Kuma then nicked his right thumb on his tooth, smeared the first five seals on the scroll with his blood, and sent a small pulse of chakra into the scroll to release the contents of those seals.

When the smoke cleared, there were five chisels sitting on top of the scroll. Each chisel blade had been shaped from a large shark tooth that had been affixed to a steel shaft and set into a wooden handle inlaid with polished coral. Kakashi picked up one of the chisels in order to get a better look and he couldn't help but admire the fine craftsmanship of the tool. He also didn't miss the fact that the tool was not just for show despite the inherent beauty in its appearance; the blade sharp enough to draw blood but also sturdy enough not to break the moment it was used.

"Very nice," Kakashi stated as he handed the chisel back to Kuma so that he could reseal it. "I take it that the entire scroll is filled with similar tools?"

"Hai; they gave me an entire set of handcrafted woodworking and woodcarving tools."

"Did they give you a similar set of tools, Same no Kouji?"

"Chigau, I never had much interest in woodworking; they gave me a few knives," Tora replied as he glared at Kakashi for a few seconds before the annoyance in his eyes morphed into deviousness just before Kakashi felt the table beneath his arm shifting before a couple dozen fine splinters pierced through his sleeve and skin. "Call me that again and I just might get creative when I get my revenge."

"No need to get all defensive, gaki," Kakashi retorted as he flooded his arm with chakra in order to push the splinters out of his skin. "What's the big deal with that nickname anyway? Did you get chased by a shark or something?"

"Or something," Tora agreed with a grimace.

"Do we get to hear the story or are you going to make us guess?" Kumade asked in an obvious attempt to draw the story from the teen.

Tora let out an annoyed huff and Kakashi suspected that Kumade was going to end up skewered with a few splinters as a result; he was just five seconds later based upon the yelp the older man let out as he jumped in his seat. Kuma snickered and easily deflected the splinters that were directed at him before he let out a startled cry when a snow ball formed over top of Kuma's head before it slipped down the back of his shirt. Kakashi could easily see the smug smirk that Tora was now wearing beneath his face mask before he let out a resigned sigh.

"I earned the nickname during the initial test the Chief of the Otters gave me to earn the right to summon them," Tora explained after another couple of minutes had passed. "I had been sent out with a group of hunters to deal with a pair of juvenile great white sharks that were terrorizing their kelp beds. During the fight, one of the younger otters was nearly eaten by the smaller of the two sharks and I saved him using my Mokuton but in doing so left myself open. The shark went after me the moment I deprived it of its meal."

"How badly were you injured?" Kakashi inquired as he recalled the bloody harpoon and shark teeth hanging above the teen's door.

"I nearly lost my left arm to the shark before I broke the shark's jaw with my Mokuton. The blood in the water sent both sharks into a feeding frenzy and the only thing that saved me was the fact that both sharks completely ignored the otters at that point. I killed the shark that bit me using the bloody harpoon that hangs above my door while the otters dealt with the other one."

"And the nickname?" Kumade prompted as he eagerly leaned forward in anticipation.

"My otter mentor, Kawanari, gave it to me in a round about way. He said, and I quote, 'You know, I didn't bring you along to bait the sharks, koneko; the idea was to hunt the sharks, not let the damn sharks hunt you.' Most of the otters have been calling me Same no Kouji ever since."

"That must have left behind some scar," Kumade commented with an impressed whistle.

"I don't scar," Tora countered with a shrug of his shoulder.

"How long did it take you to heal?" Kakashi asked as he recalled the disturbing way the teen's injuries had stopped healing during the rounding up of the spies.

"About six or seven hours and it only took that long because the otters had to dig out the teeth that had broken off in my shoulder when I'd shattered the shark's jaw. Shocked the hell out of the otters when I was up and moving again without any evidence that I'd been bitten (outside of the bloody teeth they'd dug out of my arm) by the time we made it back to the Holt."

"Why didn't you just use one of your Kekkei Genkai to the kill the shark before it could attack the otter you saved?"

"We were in the water and my Kekkei Genkai behave differently under water. I couldn't use the Hyouton because there was too great of a chance that I would have killed all of the otters if I lost control of the ice and froze the entire section of water where we were fighting. My Mokuton, on the other hand, draws on the seaweed and sea plants when under water; except for what I grow from my body and as fast as I can grow my Mokuton, I can't make it out-swim a shark. I could have killed the one on my arm while I was still trapped in his mouth but I was a bit more focused on saving my arm and getting him off at the time."

"I can imagine," Kumade snorted as he shook his head a couple of times over the idea of hunting the sharks in the first place. "Have you gone back into the water since then? I know if it was me, I'd want to avoid the ocean as much as possible after that; shark bites are nasty business."

"I usually go hunting with the clan once a month; 'cept these last couple of months because there's been no time. We've not hunted any great whites since then but I have faced a couple of tiger sharks and a young killer whale. The rest of the time we hunt gators and crocs. Them little bastards can be vicious."

"You faced a killer whale?"

"Yeah, he was just a little thing that had gotten separated from his pod. We didn't kill him; the whales don't typically mess with the Otter Clan because they're from another summoning clan (even if they aren't exactly friends) while the sharks aren't. Or at least the sharks that we've hunted weren't. I actually played with the baby whale a bit while the otters were tracking his pod and he was a right friendly little guy; though I don't know if that was just his nature or if that was because I was present."

"Why would it matter if you were present?" Kumade inquired curiously.

"Most animals like Tora; and not just because they think he's tasty," Kuma answered with a snort. "I once saw a pack of wild wolves come right up to him and behave like a bunch of half grown puppies."

"Is that related to the reason why the Nibi is supposedly drawn to you?"

"Most likely; it's hard to tell because I know next to nothing about any of the bijuu and as far as I know, Yugito is the only Jinchuuriki that I've ever come into contact with," Tora answered with a shrug of his shoulders. "I'm not even sure why the animals are drawn to me the way they are. It could have something to do with the Mokuton but it's hard to say because the version of the Mokuton I have was corrupted." The teen then fell silent for a moment before he asked, "Why do the two of you cover half of your faces all of the time?"

"I first started wearing the mask to hide my resemblance to my father," Kakashi admitted more than a little reluctantly; he disliked speaking of his father and of the dark years that followed his father's suicide. "After a while, it became habit to wear the mask and something of a game after those people I've worked with in the past sought to see under the mask."

"I started wearing the cloth mask after I earned my ANBU mask because I started feeling naked when I wasn't wearing my mask," Kumade offered a moment later. "It also makes it harder for people to read my facial expressions. Why do you wear a face mask under your mask?"

"I don't," Tora replied before he hesitantly reached up to pull the face mask down. "I only wore it as a bit of a joke because I knew of Kakashi's reputation for never taking his off. I also don't feel comfortable showing my face to others after we'd been taught to always hide our faces to prevent anyone from recognizing us. And I have a hard time trusting new people but I guess you're supposed to be an exception now that we're teammates."

"Kumade, how come you didn't take a summoning contract when you first joined the Corps?" Kuma inquired curiously as he refilled everyone's cup in order to distract the man from his intense inspection of Tora's newly revealed face.

"Most people only see the power that the summoning contracts represent; they don't see the darker side and they don't think about the potential consequences and risks involved. I'd heard one too many rumors of Orochimaru's snakes demanding human sacrifices every time they were summoned and I did not wish to end up with a contract to an animal like that. What about you two? Why did you both choose to take summoning contracts?"

"I'd wanted a contract since we first learned about them," Kuma replied with a crooked grin. "I thought it would be awesome to fight alongside of my summons like in the stories about how the Sandaime Hokage fought alongside of King Enma. I actually never thought I'd ever get a chance to sign a contract because the chances of a no-name orphan being sponsored for a contract are low. You can't imagine how excited I was when the Hokage offered us the chance to choose one the day we were given our code names."

"And what about you, Tora? What was your reason for wanting a summoning contract?" Kumade prompted when Tora didn't immediately answer and Kakashi leaned forward a bit; the seventeen year old eager and curious to learn more about the green-eyed teen.

"I didn't want one, not really," Tora replied to Kakashi's shock.

"Why not? And why did you take a contract if you didn't want one?" Kakashi inquired as he frowned slightly beneath his mask.

"My brother wanted one and because we always train together and share everything we learn, to refuse a contract would have meant denying Kuma an opportunity to fulfill one of his dreams."

"Why didn't you want a contract though?" Kakashi repeated when Tora only answered half of his question.

Kakashi felt his eyebrows disappear beneath his hitai-ate when the teen curled in on himself as his green eyes turned haunted in response to the question. He had not expected that kind of reaction from Tora or he would not have pressed the way he did. Kuma shot him a scowl a heartbeat later as he shifted closer to his brother and gently brushed his fingers against Tora's elbow. Tora immediately leaned into the touch as he turned to look at his brother; the two of them holding yet another one of their silent conversations.

Kakashi's earlier frown returned as he recalled how well Tora had fought alongside of the otters he'd summoned and tried to reconcile that image with Tora's current discomfort. He just couldn't understand how a shinobi that worked so well together with his summonses could display such unease over his contract. Or rather, over his initial lack of desire to hold said contract. There was something he was missing, some piece to the puzzle that was Tora that would shed light on the teen's current behavior and help him better anticipate which topics were taboo around the gaki.

Kuma eventually pressed a fresh cup of tea into Tora's hands once their silent conversation was over and the green eyed teen automatically took a drink. He immediately relaxed at that point and leaned into his brother; Tora obviously seeking comfort from Kuma. Kakashi was just about to open his mouth in order to change the subject in an effort to diffuse the tension when Tora unexpectedly answered the question; the teen's voice low, hoarse, and filled with emotional pain.

"I don't like the blood."

"Can you please explain that? I don't recall seeing you have a problem with blood at any time over the past couple of months."

"Other people's blood or the blood of animals doesn't bother Tora," Kuma answered in his brother's place as he wrapped on arm around Tora as if to shelter him. The brown eyed teen then anticipated Kakashi's next question as he added, "Nor does seeing his own blood spilled in a fight or during training bother him."

"I don't like my blood being used for things. And I don't like it when people take my blood," Tora clarified in a tight voice when Kuma fell silent. "It's why I don't use blood seals unless I don't have a choice."

"Why though?" Kumade asked; the older man curious about the distinction.

"He took my blood. He damn near drained me dry again and again. And then he used my blood to torture thirty four children in his wretched experiments. He murdered nineteen of those children with my blood in his sick need to force my internal healing ability on them. Fourteen of the remaining children would die because my blood wasn't good enough to save them when he tried to force the Shodai's Mokuton onto them as well. And there's not a day that goes by that I don't fear my blood will one day fail my brother and I will have to watch him die because it's still not good enough."

Tears shimmered in Tora's tormented green eyes as he glanced back up to meet Kakashi's gaze for an instant and then he was gone; teen sinking into the floor and vanishing without warning. Kakashi mentally winced; they'd really stepped in it that time. He then turned his attention back to Kuma to find the boy white as a ghost and wearing a stricken expression on his face; as if Tora's answer had been a shock to him as well.

As if reading his mind, Kuma numbly asked, "Why didn't he tell me?"

"To protect you from those inner demons that he knew would hurt you in some way," Kakashi answered with certainty; he knew enough about both teens now to know that Tora would have sheltered Kuma from anything he thought would hurt him – including himself. "Go. Go after him. He shouldn't be alone right now and I'm certain that you are the only one he'll let close to him right now given how upset he was when he left."

Kuma didn't need to be told twice as he dove into the wooden floor. Kakashi reached up and wearily ran a hand over his face as he sarcastically thought to himself; what a wonderful team bonding session this turned out to be.

"Kakashi, just what the hell was that about?" Kumade demanded in bewilderment.

"That was about a boy who bottled up a wealth of negative emotions and suppressed far too many dark and terrible memories in his bid to protect his most precious person," Kakashi grimly replied as he saw far too much of himself in Tora at that moment. "Please don't ask me for details and please don't hound them with questions. I will work on getting them to open up a bit more but first I'm going to have to do a little bit of damage control. Chikushou, Kasai is going to kill me when he learns I pushed Tora too far."

"Good luck with that, teichou," Kumade snorted as he climbed to his feet and replaced his bird mask. "I'll be in the hall if you need me."

Kakashi watched the man go with mixed feelings; he was thankful his longtime teammate had not pressed him at the moment but that the same time he felt guilty because he knew he'd offended the man by withholding information. It wasn't that Kakashi didn't want to keep Kumade informed, he did; but he didn't have permission or authorization to pass along information about Tora and Kuma's past. Kakashi scrubbed his face with both hands for a moment as he tried to get the memory of Tora's haunted eyes out of his mind.

The seventeen year old would spend the rest of the night alternately standing guard over Tora's little stray with Kumade and cat napping on Kuma's floor. Of the two younger teens, there had been no sign and Kakashi began to wonder just how far Tora had fled in his desire to outrun his inner demons. He also worried that neither boy would turn up for their shift; something that would get them both in deep shit with Kasai the moment he heard about it. He needn't have worried; both boys would turn up promptly at six in the morning.

Kakashi didn't know whether or not that was a good thing though; both of the teens were unnaturally subdued and Tora wouldn't look or speak to anyone – not even his brother. Much like seeing Kuma and Tora mock-fight with one another towards the end of their mission to Kumo, seeing Tora giving Kuma the silent treatment just seemed so wrong. Kakashi was tempted to send them both to Inoichi right that moment but before he could open his mouth, Yugito bounded out of Tora's room dressed and ready for the day.

After watching Tora stiffly tolerate Yugito's usual affectionate greeting (as if he was forcing himself to allow her to hug him), Kakashi stalked off towards Kasai's office so he could get some questions answered. He'd barely stepped into his supervisor's office before the man jumped all over him in irritation as he demanded, "Just what the hell did you say or do to set Tora off last night? Do you have any idea how much it is going to cost the department to repair the two training rooms he completely destroyed last night?"

"I'm not having this conversation twice; get Inoichi in here because I have more than a few damned questions of my own that need to be answered," Kakashi retorted as he pulled off his ANBU mask to let his own irritation show. "You might want Yagi-teichou here as well because even if Inoichi didn't notice it, Yagi damned well should have."

Kasai glared at him through his mask for a long minute before he stalked to the door and barked orders at a passing ANBU Guard. The man then stomped back to his desk and spent the next fifteen minutes glowering at Kakashi. If Kakashi wasn't so irritated about the situation (and with himself, to be honest) he might have squirmed beneath his boss's ire. As it was, Kakashi was rather upset that someone had dropped the ball on Tora's mental assessments because Tora's whole issue with sacrificing his blood should have been noticed and dealt with years ago.

Much like Nezumi's phobia of snakes should have been identified and dealt with before the man took up the damned mask.

At the end of those fifteen minutes, Yagi and Inoichi had both arrived and Kasai hastily activated a privacy barrier. The moment the barrier was in place, Kasai growled out a terse, "Explain. Now!"

"Yeah, yeah, yeah; I'll get there," Kakashi recklessly countered as he focused his attention on Yagi and Inoichi. "What I really want to know is why the hell neither one of you addressed Tora's darker memories and insecurities? Tora never should have passed a single mental evaluation given how messed up that kid is in the head from the shit he was put through as a child."

"What are you implying, Kakashi?" Inoichi demanded with a frown. "I personally handled each and every one of his evaluations and I know for a fact that I didn't miss anything."

"Really? Are you certain about that, Yamanaka-san?"

"Yes," Inoichi replied in a near growl.

"Then why don't you tell me what you did to address the issues that Tora has with blood sacrifices?"

"What issues? I've seen him use blood seals and I know he holds a summoning contract."

Kakashi gave a derisive snort as he turned to Yagi next and demanded, "Why didn't you make any effort to address Tora's obvious discomfort and aversion to getting his blood drawn for testing and transfusions? For that matter, why didn't you confront him about taking a summoning contract when it was obvious that he didn't even want one?"

"Tora insisted on taking the contract,"" Kasai interjected before Yagi could answer. "And we did deal with his aversion to having his blood drawn; otherwise we'd never get him to sit still long enough for a medic to draw his damn blood on a regular basis so that the Infirmary always has a supply of his blood in case he ever needs a transfusion. What the hell is this about, Kakashi? What did you learn that has you in such a snit?"

"Who told Tora about the other children that Orochimaru attempted to give his healing ability to?" Kakashi asked instead of answering Kasai's questions; his voice deceptively soft in stark contrast to his current anger.

"No one told him about any of the children outside of Kuma," Kasai countered and Kakashi could hear the frown in his voice.

"He had numbers, Kasai; exact numbers on how many children were used in the experiment, how many died from the initial implantation, and how many died when their stolen healing ability failed to prevent their deaths during the process Orochimaru used to implant the Mokuton. He believes it is his fault they died because his blood wasn't good enough to protect them. And he is absolutely terrified that his blood is going to one day kill Kuma because it will one day just stop working since he believes it still isn't good enough."

"All ANBU rookies are granted access to the files on Konoha's traitors during their six month training period; and that includes the reports on all of Orochimaru's experiments," Yagi stated into the dead silence that had filled the room the moment Kakashi had finished speaking.

"Tora most likely looked up that information himself during his lessons or on his free time out of a morbid sense of curiosity. And the gaki played his disinterest in summoning contracts off as an aversion to holding what he termed a 'girly' summons because otters were supposed to be cute and fluffy. I saw no other issues other than his distaste for spilling his own blood but I attributed that to his annoyance over how quickly his self-inflicted cuts healed and the fact that he needed to reopen the cut multiple times if he needed more than just a drop."

"Tora rarely ever allows anyone to see his insecurities if he can help it," Inoichi added as the man frowned thoughtfully at the floor. "The only exception would be during the times when I am required to view his memories because he relives his memories at the same time as I am watching them. Knowing that; how did you get him to open up to you? Last time I spoke to him, he still had no intention of trusting you with his face, let alone any of his secrets."

"We agreed to an equal exchange of information and he only showed me his face because Kuma showed me his. We were doing a bit of team bonding last night and things were going rather well right up until summoning contracts and blood were brought up. He took off after revealing his fear that his blood would be the death of Kuma and I sent Kuma after him because I didn't want him to be alone after what he had revealed. They both showed up on time for their shift this morning but Tora was giving Kuma the cold shoulder and he acted rather stiff with his little stray."

"No, he wouldn't have given Kuma a cold shoulder," Inoichi countered with a firm head shake. "If anything, he was so ashamed of what he believes are his own inadequacies that he cut himself off from his brother to punish himself since any distance between the two boys inevitably hurts Tora far more than it does Kuma. Kuma will not allow him to suffer for long though. Were there any other 'issues' you uncovered during your talks with the boys?"

"Possibly, how much do you know about what he remembers of his parents?"

"He has no memories of his parents."

"Not true," Kakashi insisted. "He remembers something; he spoke of blood and an iryojutsu that killed the first time we sat down and talked a few nights ago. I originally thought that memory was why he disliked blood sacrifice but he didn't even bring it up last night."

"Perhaps I should have said that he does not have any complete memories of his parents," Inoichi sighed as he reached up to rub the bridge of his nose. "Any memories that Tora retained of his life prior to being picked up by Orochimaru were so fragmented that it is impossible to piece together any accurate information about his family. Yes, he has a small handful of impressions that he can sometimes call up but that is all they are; impressions. And while I am fully aware that Tora is bothered by those fragments, they are not affecting his mental health."

"Like hell they aren't," Kakashi cut back as he grew irritated with Inoichi's insistence that there was nothing wrong with Tora's mental state. "Any one with half a brain would see that he is emotionally unstable…"

"Urusai! You've known Tora for less than six months and know even less about the lengths to which we've gone to insure that both of those boys are physically, mentally, and emotionally stable," Inoichi snapped back. "As far as Tora being somewhat emotionally unstable at the moment…? Of course he is; it's called puberty."

"Puberty…?" Kakashi parroted in bewilderment.

"Yes, puberty; you know the process that all young adolescents go through as their bodies reach sexual maturity?"

"He's fifteen though; shouldn't he have already finished going through that?"

Inoichi shook his head no before he explained, "On average, puberty in boys begins around age eleven or twelve and ends around age sixteen or seventeen. However, in Tora's case, he didn't start puberty until just a few weeks before his fifteenth birthday and the normal progression through the stages has not been occurring naturally. The current projection is that he will go through all five stages by the time he reaches his sixteenth birthday; which means that the symptoms of each stage are rather pronounced – hence why he appears to be mentally unstable at the moment. His emotions were no where near as volatile during his most recent assessment; so he probably hit another stage between then and now."

"Is that because of what Orochimaru did to them? And does Kuma have the same problem?" Kakashi quietly asked as his earlier anger disappeared in light of that revelation.

"That is the current theory in regards to Tora and to a lesser extent Kuma; though he started puberty shortly after his thirteenth birthday and his body seems to be dragging its heels instead of rushing things."

"Okay, that was unexpected. Are either of them aware of that?"

"As far as I know, yes," Inoichi replied with a small smirk of amusement. "They are still just teenagers though; so they probably don't realize just how much their currently hormonal imbalance will affect their emotions."

"Joy," Kakashi deadpanned.

"Was there anything else you needed to add?" Kasai inquired once the situation with Tora had been resolved.

"No, sir."

"Good, then get the hell out of here before I decide you need to be censured for your attitude this morning."

Kakashi snorted and slipped his porcelain dog mask back over his face as he destroyed the temporary privacy barrier he'd put up earlier. The seventeen year old then left the room and made a beeline for the upper level training rooms so he could see for himself the full extent of the damage that Tora had caused during the night. The young ANBU captain would be stunned when he finally saw what Tora had done to the two rooms.

Instead of the wasted battlefields he'd been expecting, Tora had turned one training room into a tangled jungle of living plants that snapped at anyone who attempted to enter the room while the other room had been turned into a magnificent ice palace that was guarded by hundreds of life sized, animated ice-white sculptures of different animals that were armed with sharp claws, teeth, and in a few cases swords.

The drops of blood marring the floors of both rooms were a clear indication that the colorless ice creations and living plants weren't just for show.

By the time Kakashi saw Tora again later that night, there was no sign of his earlier despondency and Kakashi made a mental note to keep an eye on the gaki in order to confirm that it was just puberty that green-eyed Tokubetsu Jounin that was affecting his mental and emotional state.

He did _not_ want another Nezumi to rip his team apart on a future mission.

* * *

**Translations:** Japanese to English

Chigau – can be used to mean wrong, no, or to differ  
Gaki – brat  
Hai – yes  
Same no Kouji – Shark Bait (Kojimaru's nickname)  
Urusai – shut up (rude)

**Notes: **

* I've read more than a few stories that mention puberty in passing but most of them are in relation to 'sex and sexual themes' when the reference is about boys while all emotional upheavals are usually in reference to girls going through puberty. Boys can get moody and emotional during puberty too though and right now, Kojimaru's extra sensitive because his body is undergoing changes rather quickly. There's also the fact that he's still dealing with the backlash from their mission to Kumo and Yugito's claim that the Nibi is drawn to him. It won't last long though.

I should also note that the underlying issues and insecurities that Kojimaru has are a problem but they are a problem that he is usually able to manage or hide. They'll be dealt with and addressed later on in the story once doing so won't affect Kojimaru's ability to carry out his current duties. The main reason why Inoichi placed all of the blame for Kojimaru current behavior on puberty was because he didn't want Kakashi holding those problems against Kojimaru or using them as an excuse to kick Kojimaru off of his team; two things that would have had a negative impact on Kojimaru.

Inoichi is also fully aware of Kakashi's issues; which also played a part in the way he handled the confrontation with Kakashi. Anyway, as I'd said earlier, the entire issue will be resolved at some point.

* * *

**11-16-15:** _Minor edits made to chapter to fix spelling/grammar mistakes and removed unnecessary author's notes._


	30. The Release

**Disclaimer:** _All HP characters are the property of JKR, the WB, and respective publishing companies and all Naruto characters are the property of Masashi Kishimoto. This is nothing more than a simple FanFiction that I have written. I have made no money from this or any of the other stories I have posted on this or other sites._

**Warnings:** _Mild to moderate violence, character death, alternate universe (i.e. kiss canon goodbye), OCC behaviors and personalities, a number of original characters and obscure canon characters to flesh out family trees, random chosen last names to give a number of characters surnames, and who knows what else._

**AN:** _This story is self-beta'd; so there may be occasional grammatical or spelling errors that crop up every now and then and for those I apologize in advance._

* * *

Chapter Thirty: The Release

_October 19, 0295 AtD, 11:15 AM  
Konohagakure no Sato, Hi no Kuni_

Kojimaru sipped at the canteen of raspberry green tea he'd been carrying all morning while his eyes intently supervised Jiraiya as the infamous pervert hummed and hawed over the Limiter Seal on Yugito's back. Scattered about the white haired man, were dozens of scrolls and papers filled with hundreds of different seal designs. The largest scroll that was unraveled and sitting right beside the man held a flawless replication of the Nibi's Containment Seal from Yugito's stomach that Jiraiya had spent four hours transcribing under Kojimaru's watchful gaze the previous evening.

Right now, the three of them were holed up in the tower that sat in the center of Training Ground Forty-Four while the Sennin worked on deactivating and removing the Limiter Seal that prevented Yugito from accessing the majority of her chakra and completely suppressed the Nibi's chakra.

The rest of Kojimaru's ANBU Squad was patrolling the perimeter of the training ground to prevent anyone from entering the area while the Sennin worked. The only reason that Kojimaru was not out there with them, was because it was hoped that his presence would have a calming effect on the Nibi if something should go wrong and the bijuu ended up taking control of Yugito. That was also the reason why they were sitting in the middle of the training grounds known to most Konoha shinobi as the Forest of Death instead of tucked securely inside of the ANBU Facility.

"Alright, gaki; brace yourself, this is going to be unpleasant," Jiraiya instructed as he placed his hands on either side of the seal so that his thumbs and index fingers formed a triangle while the knuckles of his remaining fingers rested lightly on Yugito's bare back. "Tora, you might want to prepare yourself in case anything goes wrong."

"Hai," Kojimaru replied as he put away his tea (so it wouldn't be spilled), shifted into a crouch, and brought his hands up to form the ram seal as he gathered roughly a quarter of his chakra.

Jiraiya spared him a single glance before he refocused on the Limiter Seal as he began channeling a steady stream of chakra into the design. After the first couple of minutes, Kojimaru tensed his shoulders in discomfort as the air in the room grew heavy beneath the steady onslaught of the Sennin's chakra. Yugito let out a soft gasp when the seal on her back began glowing bright blue. She would let out a brief whine of discomfort when the color of the seal shifted from blue to yellow. And she would let out a single sharp cry when the seal changed from yellow to bright white before it appeared to shatter and fade from her skin.

There was a brief moment of stillness before the entire room was flooded with Yugito's chakra as the constraints bearing down on her reserves vanished in an instant. Because he was so close to her, Jiraiya was blasted back by the shockwave of chakra that exploded outwards along with all of the scrolls that had been scattered about the floor. The Sennin hit the wall hard enough to bruise his back and give himself a mild concussion but he was otherwise alright. Kojimaru, on the other hand, had had a split second's warning because he was chakra sensitive (meaning he had felt the building up of chakra inside of Yugito).

That split second's warning was enough to allow Kojimaru to protect himself from the blast of chakra that would have thrown him into the wall as well. The force of the blast still shattered the ice shield he'd formed to protect himself but the dozens of small cuts he received from flying ice shards were healed almost as soon as they formed. The shockwave had then continued passed him to crash harmlessly into the barrier that Jiraiya had raised around the room they were in before it dissipated entirely.

Yugito had then curled over on herself with a hiss of pain due to the chakra burns she'd received from the uncontrolled blast of chakra that had just exploded out of her. Kojimaru made his way over to her after he briefly spared a glance to the slightly stunned Jiraiya. He crouched down beside her a heartbeat later and briefly touched her elbow to let her know he was there. Standing so close to her, he could sense the mass of chakra roiling just beneath her skin and feel the heat radiating off of her. He would later learn that it was the Nibi's chakra circulating through her coils alongside of her own chakra that generated the excess heat that he could feel.

The eleven year old let out a startled eep at the unexpected touch and whipped her head up and around to stare at him with frightened eyes. The moment her eyes caught his, she visibly relaxed and spun her body around so she could latch onto him. Kojimaru rested his hand on her hair for a moment before he leaned back so he could grab her shirt off of the floor so that she could cover herself back up; Jiraiya had needed her to remove her shirt so he could access the Limiter Seal. The girl blushed bright red when she abruptly remembered that she was sitting there in nothing but a pair of pants and a bra as she snatched the shirt out of his hands before she spun away from him and pulled the shirt on over her head.

Kojimaru resisted the urge to chuckle at the girl's behavior; he knew she didn't feel comfortable around men after what had happened with her attackers. And he was pretty certain that the only reason she tolerated him was because he never drew attention to her discomfort or made fun of her for it. Well, that and the fact that the Nibi apparently still felt drawn to him. He couldn't help but think that the girl looked rather cute when she was flustered though and it amused him that she often got flustered when he was around because things like her sense of modesty and decorum tended to slip out the nearest window.

Like the one time when Kojimaru had snagged the back of her shirt to keep her from chasing after one of the other ANBU members for teasing her and she'd been so annoyed she'd slipped out of her shirt without a second thought because she was determined to give chase to her tormentor (who had quickly used Kojimaru's intervention to disappear). Needless to say, she'd been mortified the moment she'd spun around to yell at him for letting the other masked shinobi get away and saw her empty shirt dangling in his hand. He was actually surprised she hadn't started calling him a pervert after that.

"Well that was an experience I could have done without," Jiraiya groused as he finally regained his wits enough to sit up.

"Well, at least you didn't damage anything important," Kojimaru blandly commented as he briefly looked towards the Sennin once more to find the man rubbing at the knot that had formed on the back of his head.

"Well I suppose that is true…" Jiraiya replied before he actually registered just what it was that Kojimaru had said and grew indignant over the implication in the teen's words. "Oi, I'll have you know my mind is very special and completely irreplaceable!"

"Yes, your mind is a scientific miracle and a medical mystery all rolled into one."

"Keep it up, smart ass, and I might just turn you over my knee and paddle your ass," Jiraiya half threatened as he climbed to his feet and approached the pair.

"So violent and so forward; whatever happened to asking a body out for dinner and a date before jumping straight into a physical relationship?"

"Gaki…" Jiraiya warned as he turned glower at the fifteen year old.

"It was just a joke, Jiraiya-sama," Kojimaru quickly assured the man around a strangled laugh.

"Impudent brat," Jiraiya huffed before he chuckled. "And I'll have you know I'm not into little boys." The man then turned away from Kojimaru as he knelt behind Yugito who was staring at the two of them with confused and wary blue eyes. "Easy, kid; I'm not into little girls, either. I prefer my partners to be mature and fully developed. Now, pull your shirt up and let me see your back again so I can make certain that the seal is completely gone."

"Pervert," Yugito huffed even as she complied with his request.

"Understatement," Kojimaru added under his breath before he had to duck sideways to avoid the Sennin's retaliatory head slap.

"Well, everything looks in order. Now I need you to lie down on your back and keep your shirt up while you channel your chakra; I want to see if the Containment Seal was affected at all by the removal of the Limiter Seal."

Yugito complied with that order as well and Kojimaru shivered a bit as he felt the endless well of chakra he could sense in the younger girl shift before she was engulfed in a maelstrom of yellow chakra. Kojimaru's chakra reserves had always been far larger than average for his age thanks to Orochimaru's experiments (and because of his magic merging with his chakra, though he wasn't aware of that little tidbit since he had no memories of magic) and they'd only grown larger over time as he increased the size of his reserves. In fact, he'd only ever met a handful of adults with larger chakra reserves than his (once he'd learned how to estimate the size of another person's reserves); the Hokage, Jiraiya, Minato, and Torifu were the ones that immediately came to mind.

He probably would have added Uzumaki Kushina's and Uzumaki Naruto's names to that list too; if he'd ever formally met either individual.

Yugito's chakra reserves dwarfed his large reserves completely though. He thought they might even be larger than the Sennin's but it was difficult to tell for certain with them being so close together and with so much of Yugito's chakra choking the air. Part of that, he knew, had to do with the bijuu that had been sealed inside of her since he couldn't exactly tell the difference between the two energies. Another part of it had to do with the Limiter Seal that she'd worn for over a year; the pressure of holding back the bulk of her reserves had actually forced her coils to rapidly expand in order to relieve the pressure created by damming the bulk of her chakra in addition to the bijuu's chakra.

Kojimaru found it hard to reconcile the vast ocean of chakra he could feel in that moment with the bare trickle he'd grown used to sensing in the girl. He wasn't afraid of Yugito, or the Nibi, but he was leery of the power she now held at her fingertips. If she lost control of herself, she could do some serious damage. That wasn't even counting how much damage the two-tailed cat could unleash if the bijuu broke through the Containment Seal. He had not forgotten the sheer amount of damage that the Kyuubi had caused during its brief rampage through the village and he had no doubt that the Nibi could do just as much damage despite it being one of the weaker bijuu.

"Alright, you can stop now," Jiraiya declared after studying the dark symbols that made up the Containment Seal for a good five minutes. "How do you feel?"

"I'm okay, I guess," Yugito replied with a shrug as she sat up and pulled her shirt back down.

"Do you feel any differences in your chakra now that the seal is gone?"

"It is hard to control. I tried to just call up a little bit to bring the seal into view but I couldn't stop the huge surge of chakra that responded. It was never that hard to control when my trainer deactivated the seal unless it was when I was trying to control the Nibi's chakra."

"That's only to be expected; you went several weeks without practicing with the full weight of your chakra because of the Limiter Seal and with reserves as large as yours, it requires constant practice to maintain control. I suggest you spend some time working on chakra control exercises before you attempt any of the jutsu that you've already been taught. That should help you regain the control you lost."

"I will make certain she practices," Kojimaru interjected; he knew exactly how important chakra control exercises were to maintaining complete control when one had larger than normal chakra reserves. "I can also teach her some of the more advanced chakra control exercises that will help her refine her control once she regains the control she lost as well."

"I suppose it shouldn't surprise me that you would need and know those particular exercises," Jiraiya mused as he turned to eye Kojimaru thoughtfully. "Remind me to teach you a few of the more advanced chakra building exercises the next time I see you. You're going to need to increase what you already have if you plan to try and keep up with your little fan-girl here."

"I'm not a fan-girl! I'm a kunoichi!"

"Are you sure about that, kid? As I understand it, you stalked Tora for days; that right there is classic fan-girl behavior."

"I only did that because of the Nibi."

"And yet you didn't ignore its demands, did you? That right there tells me that you were interested enough in the object of your affection to give in and do as it asked."

"I was just curious," Yugito mumbled as her face began turning red with embarrassment.

Jiraiya chuckled at that admission before he murmured a soft, "How ironic when you consider which bijuu you hold. Do be careful kid; curiosity killed the cat, after all." Yugito growled and gave the man a pouting glare for the cat remark before she huffed and turned her back on him; drawing yet another chuckle from the Sennin. "Alright, gaki; I'm done with you for now. While you take care of replacing her temporary disguise, I'll let the others know we're done. I don't know how long it will take me to draw up an Alteration Seal that won't interfere with the Nibi's seal but once I have something workable, I'll be in touch with you."

Jiraiya then climbed to his feet, gathered up his scattered scrolls, and dropped the defensive barrier he'd used to seal the room before he left. Kojimaru watched him leave before he pulled a leaf out of his utility pouch and used the Mokuton: Kamen no Jutsu to replace Yugito's disguise. Once her disguise was set and she had put on her blank mask, Kojimaru knelt down so that she could climb onto his back after he had noticed how stiffly she was moving; a clear indication that she was still in some pain from the chakra burns she had received. He then sent a clone to Kakashi to let him know he was walking back (and why) before he made his way out of the tower.

"Do you hate me now?" Yugito asked quietly after the first twenty minutes they'd spent walking through the forest alongside of the river that cut through the vast training ground; Kojimaru taking his time transporting her in order to avoid jostling her and making her pain worse.

"No, I don't. And I am not afraid of you either," Kojimaru answered without any hesitation.

"What about the Nibi though?"

"What about the bijuu?"

"Doesn't it bother you that the Nibi is interested in you?"

"No, not really."

"Why not? The Nibi might only be interested in you because it thinks you're a toy and it could kill you without any warning if it ever grows bored with you."

"Death does not frighten me; death is inevitable and everyone will die someday. That's not to say I want to die, I don't. I'm just not afraid of dying. If I was afraid of death, I never would have chosen to become a shinobi and I would never dare to leave the relative safety of the village. After all, each time a shinobi leaves the village on a mission, he or she runs the risk of being killed by an enemy."

"What are you afraid of then…?"

"Running out of tea and being forced to drink the pathetic swill that the hospital and the cafeteria call tea."

"That's not a real answer."

"Yes, it is. It is just not the answer that you were fishing for. It is also the only answer I am going to give you."

"Why won't you tell me what you are really afraid of?"

"Can you not think of a reason why I would tell you what my deepest fears are?"

"Because you don't trust me."

"There is some truth in that statement, though it is not the full truth."

"Is it because I haven't given you any reason to trust me?"

"Not exactly, since you haven't given me a reason to mistrust you either."

"Then why…?"

"If you think about it, you will find that you already know the answer to that question," Kojimaru stated instead of answering the question and the fifteen year old had to fight back a chuckle when Yugito growled at him in irritation as a result.

Silence settled over the two of them as Kojimaru continued to follow the river. Over the course of the next hour, the two of them would cross paths with a small family of tigers, a solitary bear, and a herd of pygmy deer. The tigers had watched them curiously from across the river bank, the bear had ignored them entirely as it fished in the river, and the herd of small deer had scattered immediately the moment they sensed the Nibi's chakra clinging to Yugito.

At the end of the hour, Yugito broke the silence when she suddenly stated, "You didn't tell me your fears because you don't really know me very well and you don't trust me very much because of the same reason. You also didn't want to talk about your fears in a place where there is even the smallest chance that someone else you don't trust could hear you."

"Correct."

"Does that mean that you aren't really my friend? That you just said you were that day to make me calm down?"

"You certainly do like to ask the difficult questions, don't you?" Kojimaru asked rhetorically as he crossed over the river to avoid disturbing a grumpy badger that was drinking from the river. "I'll answer your second question first; yes, part of the reason I called myself a friend when we first met was to keep you calm. However, that doesn't make it any less true. And while it is hard to be friends with someone you don't really know, I'd like to think that, in time, you and I could be friends."

"Does that mean you want to be my friend?"

"Yes."

"Why?"

"Why not? Everyone should have at least one friend. And it never hurts to make a new friend."

"Is it hard to make friends?"

"No, it is very easy to make friends; the hard part is keeping the friends you make."

"What do you mean?"

"People are constantly changing; we grow in so many different ways. Sometimes, we grow closer to our friends and at other times we grow further apart from them. Each day brings with it new experiences that add to who we were, who we are, and who we will be. It takes a lot of work to stay friends with people when you are both constantly evolving."

Silence settled over the two of them once more at that point. Half an hour later, they would reach the edge of the training grounds. As he approached the fence, Kojimaru could feel the familiar weight of the chakra running through the barrier seals that had been woven into the very metal that made up the chain links of the fence to keep the denizens of the forest inside of the forest. It was at that moment that he realized that Jiraiya had taken the gate key with him and he let out a soft sigh of annoyance.

It wasn't that it was difficult for him to bypass the protections on Training Ground Forty-Four, it wasn't. It was that the guards that monitored the dangerous stretch of forest would get right cranky with him because bypassing the barriers on the fence set off the alarms and sent them into a panic thinking one of the more dangerous creatures had escaped. It was an occurrence that happened often enough to require a dedicated platoon of guards whose job was to monitor and maintain the barriers as well as deal with any escapees.

He had just resigned himself to yet another lecture on proper procedure when Kakashi dropped down in front of the gate that sat just a few feet away from where the river flowed beneath the fence line.

"I do hope you aren't considering what I think you are considering; the Gate Guards don't take kindly to false alarms."

"So long as you have a key to the gate, I won't need to do what you think I was considering on doing," Kojimaru retorted as he approached the gate. "If you don't, well, I'm sure that the Gate Guards will dislike ending up with splinters in unmentionable places just as much as any one else if they get a little too anal retentive about Jiraiya taking off with the gate key and leaving the two of us high and dry."

"As fun as it might be to find out, I'd rather avoid the lecture I would get from Kasai if I allow you to tweak the noses of the Gate Guards just so that you can prank them," Kakashi replied as he unlocked the gate and held it open.

Kojimaru snorted; he knew Kasai would be far more likely to chew him out for annoying the Gate Guards than he was to lecture Kakashi for something the fifteen year old had done. Kasai was a firm believing in placing the blame squarely on those responsible and if Kojimaru annoyed the Gate Guards, then it was Kojimaru who would be disciplined and dressed down for giving him headaches.

"You're being awfully quiet," Kakashi observed as he reached out to poke Yugito in the side; the eleven year old letting out a soft squeal as she shifted away from the offending digit. "What's wrong? Cat got your tongue?"

"Urgh, you are annoying," Yugito growled irritably as she shot Kakashi a glare for the cat comment.

"Of course he is," Kojimaru agreed as a smirk pulled at the corner of his mouth beneath his tiger mask. "Being annoying is part of Inu's job description."

"And Tora's new job description has him listed as a target for shurikenjutsu training," Inu deadpanned as he reached out and slapped Kojimaru on the back of the head.

"That's in every shinobi's job description," Tenzou snorted as he dropped out of the trees and fell into step with the trio.

"True, but very few shinobi end up trussed up in ninja wire and hanging from a tree by their feet during training sessions after Inu has confiscated all the shuriken and kunai from the supply room just so he can drag the training session out for hours," Taka pointed out as he caught up to them next.

Kojimaru exchanged a quick glance with Tenzou before they both crowed, "Sounds like fun."

"That's only because the two of you are completely nuts," Taka deadpanned as he rolled his eyes.

Kojimaru and Tenzou just laughed while Yugito giggled softly from Kojimaru's back and Kakashi let loose a few soft chuckles of his own before he fell silent. A companionable silence would engulf the group as they made their way back to the ANBU Headquarters; all five of them wrapped up in their own thoughts as they monitored their surroundings. As soon as they reached the relative safety of Headquarters, Kojimaru and Tenzou would split off from the other two as Kojimaru carried Yugito to the Infirmary for a medical check-up to insure that the chakra burns she received earlier were properly treated and make certain that there were no other medical complications that had cropped up in relation to the released Limiter Seal.

Once Yugito had been cleared by the medic on duty (her body already healed by the time they'd arrived at the Infirmary due to the influence of the Nibi), the two teens hauled the eleven year old off to the Cafeteria where they grabbed a late lunch. Knowing that the girl disliked trying to eat with her mask on (a skill that took months to properly master if you didn't want anyone to catch a glimpse of your face each time you took a bite), the three of them carried their food back to Kojimaru's room to eat.

After their meal, the two teens would drag Yugito up to the training rooms to work on her chakra control under Tenzou's supervision while he took Jiraiya's suggestion to heart and worked on increasing his chakra reserves for an hour. At the end of that hour, Kojimaru switched places with Tenzou so he could spend the next two hours working with Yugito on her taijutsu while his brother spent that time increasing his reserves after Kojimaru had silently passed on Jiraiya's suggestion.

The first hour was spent teaching Yugito the taijutsu style that was taught at Konoha's Academy since the current style she used (which was Kumo's Academy taijutsu style) was far too distinctive for her to continue using it. The second hour would then be spent watching the eleven year old spar against a water clone as he called out corrections to her form each time she slipped back into the Kumo style.

The two styles shared enough of the same basic core stances that it wasn't too much of an issue for Yugito to learn the new style but at the same time, she'd been using the Kumo style for so long that it wasn't exactly easy to use the new stances and katas that he was teaching her. It would take months, possibly years, of hard work for Yugito to retrain her body; long standing habit and three years of muscle memory weren't going to be broken over night, after all. Kojimaru would never once hear Yugito complain though; the eleven year old still determined to earn a measure of respect.

Only this time, she wanted the respect of a single individual rather than an entire village (not that he was aware of just whose respect she was trying to earn). Kojimaru also suspected that she felt that she had to prove her worth to those that saw her presence as nothing but a political headache.

After the second hour of taijutsu training, Kojimaru and Tenzou would take Yugito back to Kojimaru's room so she could take a quick shower and change into clean clothes. The three of them would then spend the rest of the afternoon in the library studying; Yugito learning Konoha's history and laws while the two Tokubetsu Jounin split their time between tutoring Yugito and browsing through the ninjutsu archives.

Inu and Taka turned up at six to take Yugito to supper and to switch places with Kojimaru and Tenzou. The two teens were quick to bid both their teammates and their charge goodnight before they returned to Tenzou's room to change out of their ANBU uniforms and activate each other's disguise seals before they left Headquarters for the night. The two of them would then go their separate ways as Tenzou headed home to his aunt and uncle while Kojimaru headed over to the Nara Compound to spend time with his godson since he knew his godfather was out of the village on a mission.

Kojimaru had barely set foot inside of the Compound before he was attacked by an excited three year old after a brief warning squeal of, "Koji-nii!"

Laughing softly over the un-Nara-like behavior from his godson and the nickname he'd been assigned by the little tyke because he was too lazy to say his full name, Kojimaru leaned down and swept the child up into his arms before he tossed him up into the air. Loud shrieks of laughter spilled forth from the three year old when Kojimaru caught him on his way back down and proceeded to tickle him before swinging him up onto his back. His godson then promptly wrapped his arms around Kojimaru's neck before he planted a sloppy kiss on his cheek.

"I missed you, daifu," Shikamaru declared as Kojimaru began making his way towards Shikaku's house.

"Did you now?"

"Yes, you were gone a whole week this time," Shikamaru pointed out in an aggrieved tone.

"Yare, yare; how terrible of me," Kojimaru replied in a serious tone that barely hid his amusement.

"Yes it was. You can make it up to me by making me some fried mackerel for breakfast."

"Who said anything about me sticking around long enough to make you breakfast?"

"I did," Shikamaru imperiously answered as he bopped Kojimaru on the head.

"I guess that means I don't have any choice but to stay the night," Kojimaru drawled around a chuckle as they reached the house that had been something of a second home to him for eleven years now.

"Mendoukusei," Shikaku complained from the growing shadows beside the house. "If I had known I would have to put up with you for the entire night, then I wouldn't have talked Chouza out of going out drinking tonight."

"I'm hurt, Shikaku; don't you love me any more?"

"No."

"Itai," Kojimaru gasped dramatically as he pressed his hands over his heart and pouted at his former babysitter.

"Don't worry, Koji-nii; I still love you," Shikamaru assured Kojimaru as he kissed him on the cheek a second time and hugged him tightly. "The deer and kaasan still love you best too."

"Mendoukusei, both of you are incorrigible brats," Shikaku muttered as he pushed Kojimaru through the door. "Go get cleaned up you two; Yoshino has supper waiting on the table."

Kojimaru snickered as he carried Shikamaru off towards the bathroom to wash their hands and faces. Ten minutes later, he was seated between Shikamaru and Shikaku at the dining room table. All through the meal, Yoshino grilled him about his week, his diet, his godfather's health, and his social life. In between the prying questions, Shikamaru dutifully filled him in on all of the things he'd done since he'd last seen his godfather. Shikaku made a few comments here and there but mostly just listened to the conversation with lazy contentment; the man pleased to have a small break from his wife's rather forceful attention (read nagging).

After the meal, Kojimaru spent an hour bonding with Shikamaru; the fifteen year old patiently teaching his godson how to draw (and recognize) different types of leaves and flowers. At the end of that hour, Yoshino whisked the three year old off to get him ready for bed while Shikaku pulled Kojimaru into his office. Kojimaru was unsurprised to find Inoichi waiting for them in the office; he'd expected the man to rifle through his memories from that morning at some point.

He was at least thankful that the man wouldn't be digging too deeply; he had no wish for Inoichi to view the shame he still felt over his brief emotional melt down near the end of the team bonding session that Kakashi had set up for their squad.

* * *

**Translations:** Japanese to English

Daifu – godfather  
Gaki – brat  
Hai – yes  
Itai – ouch  
Okaasan/kaasan – mother  
Oniisan/niisan/nii – older brother  
Yare, yare – typically an expression of relief or disappointment (depending on the inflection and the context) but yare also means oh dear or dear me (basically an exclamation)

* * *

**11-16-15:** _Minor edits made to chapter to fix spelling/grammar mistakes and removed unnecessary author's notes._


	31. The Meeting

**Disclaimer:** _All HP characters are the property of JKR, the WB, and respective publishing companies and all Naruto characters are the property of Masashi Kishimoto. This is nothing more than a simple FanFiction that I have written. I have made no money from this or any of the other stories I have posted on this or other sites._

**Warnings:** _Mild to moderate violence, character death, alternate universe (i.e. kiss canon goodbye), OCC behaviors and personalities, a number of original characters and obscure canon characters to flesh out family trees, random chosen last names to give a number of characters surnames, and who knows what else._

**AN:** _This story is self-beta'd; so there may be occasional grammatical or spelling errors that crop up every now and then and for those I apologize in advance._

* * *

Chapter Thirty-One: The Meeting

_October 19, 0295 AtD, 09:27 PM  
Konohagakure no Sato, Hi no Kuni_

"Come and make yourself comfortable," Inoichi instructed as he gestured to the couch he was standing beside and Kojimaru made a face at the blond as he dropped down onto the couch as ordered. Inoichi ignored the teen's antics as he placed his hand on his forehead as he quietly explained, "I'm going to bring Shikaku with me this time so that he can view your memories at the same time; meaning that you can expect a bit more discomfort that usual this time."

Kojimaru frowned for a brief moment before he sighed in resignation as he closed his eyes and tried to ignore the feeling of both men sliding into his mind less than a minute later. He then spent the next half an hour watching his morning play out once more as Inoichi and Shikaku watched his memory of Jiraiya removing Yugito's Limiter Seal. Immediately after that memory, the two men watched Kojimaru's walk through the forest with the eleven year old and listened to their conversation play out before they skimmed through the time that he'd spent watching over and training with Yugito throughout the day. They ended the viewing session as soon as Inu and Taka turned up to relieve Kojimaru and Tenzou.

Once he felt them leave his mind, Kojimaru reached up and scrubbed at his scalp with both hands in an effort to erase the uncomfortable feeling of having the two men inside of his head. He was at least thankful that he hadn't ended up with a killer headache due to Shikaku's presence in his mind alongside of Inoichi's. A warm weight being set on his stomach had Kojimaru peeling one eye open and craning his head up in confusion. A soft exclamation of pleasure escaped his lips a moment later when his eyes fell on the plate of freshly made taiyaki sitting on his stomach.

"Ayaka insisted on making a fresh batch earlier this evening when she learned that I would be seeing you tonight," Inoichi explained as Kojimaru collected the plate and sat up so he could dig into the treat.

"I swear, if it wouldn't mean leaving ojisan behind, I would so move into your house just so that I could eat your wife's homemade taiyaki all the time," Kojimaru swore as he bit into the first still warm treat and tasted warm cream cheese combined with the sour taste of umezuke. "Ayaka always makes the best taiyaki."

"I'll be sure to pass your compliments on to my wife when I get home," Inoichi replied with a chuckle. The newly instated head of the Yamanaka Clan then took a moment to study Kojimaru critically before he asked, "Did Shikaku's presence cause you any pain on top of the usual discomfort you experience during a Mind Delving?"

"No, though I'm not sure I want you bringing other people into my mind again any time soon."

"Don't worry; it's not something I do all that often. I only brought him with me into your mind tonight because he needed to see the memory of the seal's removal first hand so he could get a clearer picture of what happened."

"Was there anything else you needed from me?" Kojimaru inquired as he polished off his third fish shaped pastry.

"No, you're free to go corrupt my son further," Shikaku answered in Inoichi's place; his tone filled with a mixture of resignation and amusement.

"Yosh!" Kojimaru cried eagerly as he bounded out of Shikaku's office with his half-eaten plate of taiyaki in hand so that he could hunt down his godson.

He soon found the three year old in his bedroom tucked into bed but not yet asleep. Shikamaru gave a soft cry of pure glee when Kojimaru readily shared the remaining fish shaped treats with him while he told the boy a couple of bedtime stories and used his Hyouton and Mokuton to bring the fairy tales to life. His godson loved to see the stories play out right in front of him and it was the one secret that two boys shared; since Kojimaru wasn't supposed to use either Kekkei Genkai in front of those who didn't know about his hidden past.

Kojimaru couldn't resist putting a smile on his godson's face though and his efforts to entertain the child had actually helped him to improve his animated wood and ice creations until they were almost indistinguishable from the creatures they represented. The only noticeable difference between the animations and their living counterparts was their size; since he usually kept them between six and twelve inches in height to make them easier to hide or dispose in order to avoid getting caught.

He also never used the realistic looking animations when he used the more destructive versions of the jutsu; the teen refused to ever take a risk that one of his animations would ever harm his godson. He also never wanted his godson to mistake one of his destructive animations for the friendly little animations he used to act out the stories he told. And the best way to do that was to make certain the two versions of the jutsu looked nothing alike; which is why all of his destructive constructs lacked any hints of color outside of the faded ice-blue or clouded white of natural ice.

By the time Kojimaru finished the second story, Shikamaru had fallen asleep and the teen quickly got rid of his animated figures before he cleaned up the toddler and tucked him more firmly back into bed. He then took out the spare futon that was kept in Shikamaru's closet and spread it out on the floor a short distance away from his godson's bed. Two minutes later, Kojimaru was dozing lightly on top of the futon when Shikaku checked in on the pair on his way to bed.

The fifteen year old was up bright and early the next morning so he could run through his morning exercises and cook Shikamaru's fried mackerel as requested before he headed back to Headquarters.

Tenzou was already waiting for him when he arrived and the two of them took a second to release each other's disguises before they dressed in their uniforms and prepared for their day. Once they were ready, the two of them slipped out into the hallway where their captain and teammate were standing guard outside of Kojimaru's room under a camouflage jutsu. The two older shinobi showed themselves a split second later and Inu gave them a once over before he and Taka both headed off to get some rest.

Yugito bounded out of the room just two minutes later and gave her now standard morning hug to Kojimaru before the three of them wandered off towards the cafeteria to grab breakfast. Once they finished eating, the two teens would take Yugito to the library for a couple of hours so she could continue studying Konoha's history and laws. After two hours of book work, the three of them headed up to the training rooms where they would spend the rest of the morning working on chakra control and taijutsu.

Their training was interrupted shortly before lunch when Jiraiya turned up to inspect Kojimaru and Tenzou's disguise seals in his efforts create a similar set of seals for Yugito to use for her disguise. Kojimaru thought it was rather weird that the Sennin would need to inspect their seals when the man had access to Torifu's original notes but eventually put it down to the man being thorough in his research since the new seal would have the potential of interfering with the Nibi's Containment Seal.

The examinations would take place behind a wooden screen since neither Kojimaru nor Tenzou had yet shown Yugito their faces. It wasn't that they didn't trust the girl, it was just a long standing habit for them to hide their faces beneath their masks and they technically didn't have permission to show her their faces. The only reason they'd shown their faces to Kakashi and Kumade was because they were their teammates and even then, Kojimaru hadn't exactly wanted to.

Once Jiraiya was finished with them, the two teens took Yugito to lunch before they returned to the training rooms so she could practice her shurikenjutsu. They also had her practice the three basic Academy jutsu in order to test just how much the removal of the Limiter Seal and her subsequent loss of control affected her techniques. That would also give them an idea of just how much work it would take for them to help her regain her former level of control.

It quickly became apparent that Yugito's control was far worse than Kojimaru's had been after he had fully activated all three of his Kekkei Genkai during the wildcat incident eleven years earlier. A quick conference with Tenzou saw the two of them teaching the eleven year old how to climb walls using Kinobori no Waza after they found out that she didn't know how to walk up the walls. To protect her from getting hurt if she fell, Kojimaru covered the entire training room floor in large, springy leaves that would cushion her falls.

Tenzou then reinforced the training room walls with a foot of solid wood so that the walls would not be damaged each time Yugito used too much chakra. He also made several platforms at different heights that Yugito could use to rest on when needed. Kojimaru then handed Yugito a kunai to mark her progress and set her to running up the wall after he gave her a demonstration of the technique. The two of them would watch her for the first half hour before Kojimaru moved off to summon a couple of otters in order to get in some kenjutsu training.

Kojimaru had to put up with a short inquisition as the two young otter warriors he'd summoned questioned him about where he'd been for the last two and a half months. Kojimaru told them he'd gone on a long term mission before he asked them if they wanted to gossip or train. He also had to deflect a few questions about Yugito when the otters got a good whiff of the Nibi's chakra as the girl raced up the wall before the three of them actually began sparring. The fifteen year old would then spend the next hour and a half being put through his paces by the two otters.

Tenzou would spend that time altering between keeping an eye on Yugito and working on a new Mokuton Jutsu that he'd recently been given by Kisuke. Tenzou also repeatedly reminded Yugito to get back to work each time she stopped to watch Kojimaru's training for more than two minutes.

Inu and Taka would turn up near the end of Kojimaru's spar and watch the final ten minutes of Kojimaru's spar with his summonses before the teen called an end to the training session. Kojimaru had known the minute the pair had entered the room due to the unique feel of their captain's chakra; which the teen had grown familiar with during their stay in Kumo due to the number of times he'd used his Kamen no Jutsu on his captain and the handful of times he'd pulled the man through the floors.

"Thanks for the beating, Kawatsuki; Kawarashi," Kojimaru offered as he bowed to the two otters.

"Any time, Same no Kouji," Kawatsuki teased before she disappeared in a burst of smoke before Kojimaru could respond to her use of that wretched nickname.

"Tousan is going to want to speak with you soon, koneko; he thinks you've been throwing a temper tantrum all this time because of the way he was throwing your nickname around two months ago," Kawarashi warned once Kojimaru had stopped scowling at the place where Kawatsuki had last stood.

"I'll summon him next week at the usual time," Kojimaru replied even as he made a face beneath his mask. "I'd have summoned him today but I didn't feel like being heckled and needled on top of being thrashed. Can you let the rest of the gang know that I'll come visit for a proper shindig as soon as I get a couple of days off?"

"Sure thing, koneko; the others have been eager to celebrate our first real battle together for the past two months."

"I'd have come as soon as I woke up but the heathens that run the Infirmary would have tied me to a bed and force fed me that swill they claim is tea if I had and once I had been cleared for full duty, I got sent out on a long term mission."

"You and your tea," Kawarashi snorted as he gave Kojimaru a slight shove. "Any other messages you need to pass on before I go home?"

"Yes, actually, I have one," Inu interjected as he moved to stand beside Kojimaru. "It's actually more of a question though and it's possible that you might be able to answer it for me."

"And you are?"

"Kawarashi, meet Inu; my squad captain. Teichou, meet Kawarashi; journeyman warrior of the Otter Clan," Kojimaru introduced in response to the question.

"Pleasure to finally meet you, Inu-san; you impressed quite a few of us during the fight two months ago," Kawarashi murmured in reply after he gave the masked Kakashi a quick once over.

"It's nice to meet you too and I must confess that I was rather impressed with how well you and your fellow otters worked together with your summoner that night; it's rare to see such cohesion in the midst of chaos without years and years of practice."

Kojimaru snorted at his captain's obvious attempt to butter up the otter. Kawarashi obviously recognized the attempt as well since he merely smirked at Inu before he prompted, "You mentioned a question."

"Ah, yes; does the Otter Clan have any reservations about working with the Dog Clan?" Inu asked without any indication that he was embarrassed about being caught out trying to cozy up to the otter. "The reason why I'm asking is because I have a conditional contract with eight members of the Dog Clan and I do not wish for a conflict to arise between your clan and my ninken partners on future missions where such a conflict could potentially get a member of my squad seriously injured or killed."

"The Dog Clan you say? Hnn, I'm not familiar with our Clan's stance when it comes to working the dogs because no otter has worked with their clan within my lifetime. You'll have to have koneko summon Kawakaze-toumoku and ask him since I don't think tousan would know the answer to that question either. Did you need to know right this minute?"

"You can summon the otter chief?" Inu asked Kojimaru instead of answering the otter's question.

"I have permission to call upon any member of the Otter Clan; the only two stipulations the chief gave me was that I could not summon an otter I have not trained alongside into a fight and that I not summon any pups under forty seasons of age outside the safety of the village's walls. I've never actually summoned Kawakaze-toumoku, though I do have permission to call on him."

"How cranky is the chief going to be if Tora calls on him?" Inu asked as he turned back to Kawarashi.

"That depends on what he's doing; if he summons him away from his paperwork, then he's liable to throw a party and never want to leave but if he summons him away from his holt, then he's liable to skin the one responsible for dragging him away from his family and use his pelt for a welcome mat."

"I'm not in the mood to find out how long it would take for all of my skin to grow back," Kojimaru deadpanned as he defensively crossed his arms at the thought of being skinned alive. "Kawarashi, could you please let your otousan know that I'll summon him tomorrow to discuss the matter of the Dog Clan with him and make arrangements to meet with Kawakaze-toumoku to work out a treaty if necessary; since I'm kinda stuck with my teichou at this point?"

"I feel so unloved," Inu muttered around a huff and Kojimaru just snickered as he briefly glanced at the older teen.

"I can do that," Kawarashi replied around a laugh. "You might want to have your brother include Bizekuro in that meeting since the Beavers will not be pleased to be excluded from that discussion."

"That won't be a problem; I'll summon Bizekuro tonight and let him know what's going on," Tenzou stated from where he stood beside the door waiting for Kojimaru to finish up.

"If that's all, then I'll get going before tousan starts to suspect that I'm conspiring with our little koneko."

"I can and will slather your hide with barbecue sauce and roast you over an open fire," Kojimaru mock threatened as he uncrossed his arms and propped them on his hips. Kawarashi just laughed as he disappeared in a cloud of smoke. "I am so going to have to find me a pound or two of flea eggs to seed his nest with them the next time I visit the Holt."

"Kawanari would string you up and use you as gator bait again if you did," Tenzou snorted in amusement.

"What time did you want to meet tomorrow?" Inu inquired in a voice that sounded rather amused.

"Doesn't really matter to me; though Kawanari will be rather grumpy if I summon him out of his bed before dawn."

"I'd rather avoid a grumpy summons; why don't we meet around lunchtime instead," Inu suggested with a brief shudder that made Kojimaru wonder what grumpy summons Kakashi had had a run in with in the past. "Are we going to need to hold the meeting outside for you to summon the chief?"

"Why would we need to go outside?"

"So that there is enough room for you to summon the boss; it has been my experience that the size of a summons is directly proportional to the amount of power they hold."

"I remember Yagi-teichou mentioning something like that back when we first signed our contracts but it doesn't apply to either the Beavers or the Otters. Kawakaze-toumoku is actually the smallest otter in the Clan not counting the pups; he stands about waist high to me. Bizezuumi-toumoku on the other hand is at least nine feet tall."

"How strange; Gamabunta, Manda, and Katsuyu are all large enough to dwarf the entire village," Inu mused as he fingered the chin of his dog mask. "No matter, was noon fine with you or did you wish to wait until after you eat?"

"Noon is fine; we can meet here and I'll bring lunch. Will your ninken eat fish?"

"Yes, they'll eat almost anything."

"Okay," Kojimaru murmured as he headed for the door; pausing only long enough to allow Yugito to hug him one last time. "We'll see you in the morning."

The two fifteen year olds headed back to Tenzou's room at that point and Kojimaru stuck around long enough to hear what Bizekuro had to say on the Beaver Clan's feelings about working with the Dog Clan before he headed back to the Nara Estate for the second night in a row. This time, he and Shikamaru had the entire house to themselves until just after midnight when Shikaku took advantage of Kojimaru's presence to take Yoshino out on a dinner date. Neither Kojimaru nor Shikamaru minded as they camped out in the garden all night stargazing with a pair of deer for company.

* * *

_October 21, 0295 AtD, 12:07 AM  
Konohagakure no Sato, Hi no Kuni_

Shikaku left his wife to get ready for bed while he went to check on his son and the troublesome teen he thought of as a cross between a son and nephew. He wasn't really surprised to find his son's bed empty and the sliding door leading out into the garden open; it was just like Kojimaru to drag Shikamaru out for a late night adventure. Stepping outside, Shikaku searched the small garden and snorted in amused exasperation when he found both boys snuggled up between a pair of deer on the grass covered hill where Shikaku had spent much of his youth watching clouds.

"Mendoukusei, the gaki just had to let himself fall asleep outside and leave it to me to carry both of them back into the house," Shikaku halfheartedly complained even as a fond smile tugged at the corners of his mouth.

He scooped his son up a moment later, carried the sleeping toddler into his room, and tucked him into bed before he returned to the garden to collect the teen. As he lifted Kojimaru into his arms, Shikaku couldn't help but recall the numerous times he'd watched over the rambunctious boy over the past eleven years. Most of the time the child had been bursting with energy and his eyes filled with wonder and joy as he eagerly met each day.

It wasn't Kojimaru's seemingly endless happiness and mischief making that filled Shikaku's thoughts at the moment though. No, it was those rare moments when the child's perpetual happy mask had slipped and allowed Shikaku a brief glimpse of the tortured soul locked inside of Kojimaru's small body that consumed his thoughts at the moment. Those scattered handful of times when the child's emotions overpowered the concealment seals that hid his true face and Shikaku had been given a teasing flash of leaf green eyes filled with haunted torment.

The twenty-eight year old didn't want to believe that those brief glimpses had been the real Kojimaru. He didn't want to find out he'd failed the child that he'd long seen as something along the lines of a son and nephew. And yet he couldn't quite suppress the fear that the teen in his arms was far more broken than he'd ever imagined after Inoichi had passed on the information that the teen had recently had a minor breakdown brought out by the on-set of puberty.

As he used his foot to kick open the spare futon on the floor of Shikamaru's bedroom, Shikaku couldn't help but curse Hatake Kakashi for finding the cracks in Kojimaru's mask that had been revealed in a moment of emotional instability due to a hormone imbalance. Cracks that Shikaku should have seen. Cracks that Inoichi should have noticed. And cracks that Maruboshi Kosuke should have discovered years earlier. It should not have fallen to a perfect stranger to see the broken soul inside of the child that Shikaku had been charged to watch over all of these years.

And Kojimaru was still a child – despite the fact that he was fifteen now.

Kojimaru would deny it loud and long if confronted but the gaki was still a child at heart.

A broken child buried beneath the façade of a happy teen locked up inside the mind of a boy that acted far too mature for his age whenever he wasn't wearing an invisible mask to hide his inner darkness.

Because despite the fact that his current moodiness and mood swings could be played off as Kojimaru dealing with the rapid changes to his body and body chemistry due to puberty, those feelings and insecurities about his blood didn't just come out of nowhere. Those had to have been buried deep within the teen's psyche all these years. Or at least since the gaki had learned the full details of what had been done to him by the traitor (since Shikaku was pretty certain Kojimaru hadn't known about the other children that Orochimaru had attempted to give his healing ability to prior to earning his official ANBU mask).

"You think too loud, Shikaku," Kojimaru muttered sleepily as he cracked open one sapphire blue eye for a split second before he snuggled against Shikaku's chest.

"How long have you been awake?"

"Since you picked me up; you radiate far too much heat."

"Mendoukusei; you were awake all this time and you still made me carry you?"

"I figured it's what you wanted since you could have just shaken me awake and told me to go to bed instead of picking me up off the ground."

"You are such a brat; I could have thrown my back out dragging you around."

"I didn't realize that you were such an old man."

"You're not so big that I can't turn me over me knee," Shikaku threatened as he scowled at the teen in his arms.

"Pfft, we both know that you're too damn lazy to bother carrying out that threat."

"Remind me again why I put up with you?"

"Because you know your life would be boring without me to liven it up."

"Impudent gaki," Shikaku growled as he dropped the teen onto the futon without warning.

"Itai! Itai! What the hell, Shikaku!?"

"I couldn't be bothered to waste the energy to set you down."

"I'm going to tell Yoshino that you were being mean to me again," Kojimaru petulantly threatened as he scowled up at Shikaku.

"No, you won't," Shikaku countered with a smirk. "We both know you're too chicken to follow through on that threat when you know full well that I know that you not only gave Shikamaru sweets after bedtime last night but that you let him eat them in bed."

"Chikushou, it really sucks when you have counter-blackmail material; it takes all the fun out of blackmailing you."

"Go back to sleep, Kojimaru-kun," Shikaku ordered with a soft laugh as he used his Kage Mane no Jutsu to smack the teen upside the head with his pillow.

Kojimaru stuck his tongue out at Shikaku even as he snagged hold of the weaponized pillow and curled up around it. Shikaku laughed again over the teen's antics only for his amusement to fade away the moment he heard Kojimaru's breathing even out in sleep once more; his thoughts once more cycling through the conversation he'd had with Inoichi just a couple of days earlier.

_Kamisama above, please don't let the child be irreparably broken; too many people need and love him_, Shikaku prayed as he watched a beam of moonlight dance across the sleeping teen's face.

* * *

_October 21, 0295 AtD, 10:39 AM  
Konohagakure no Sato, Hi no Kuni_

Kojimaru bit back his distaste as he pierced his thumb and ran through the hand seals for the Kuchiyose no Jutsu in order to summon Kawanari. Despite how much he enjoyed working with the otters, he still hated the fact that his blood was required to call them forth from their home. Just a few feet away from him Tenzou was summoning Bizekuro at the same time and both otter and beaver appeared within seconds of one another in a burst of smoke.

"It's about time you called on me again, Same no Kouji; I was beginning to think you were sulking like a half-grown pup that's been told he's too young to visit the kelp beds," Kawanari chided as he used his tail to sweep Kojimaru's feet out from under him.

Kojimaru let himself fall backwards even as he formed a pencil thin ice whip and used it to lasso the otter's mustache before he pulled the ornery old otter down with him. Kawanari yelped like a newborn pup in response to the sensitive whiskers being pulled and he crashed down alongside the teen just seconds later. The two of them then promptly began wrestling as they rolled across the floor in a flurry of fur and feet.

"I swear, Kawanari looses decades of maturity whenever he is summoned," Bizekuro sighed as he stepped away from the brawling duo. "He's like a half-grown kit growing his first chin whisker when your brother is around."

"Kojimaru has that affect on most everyone," Tenzou sagely agreed as he lightly jumped over the pair to avoid being knocked down as they continued to flail about on the floor.

"I know where you both sleep!" Kojimaru hollered as he used his ice whip to form a bridle that he muzzled Kawanari with before he grew a sleek wooden saddle on the otter's back so he could ride him like a horse.

Kawanari took immediate offense to being used as a beast of burden and he promptly snagged hold of Kojimaru's shoulders and hauled the teen over his head and wrapped him up in a choke hold only for Kojimaru to explode in a flurry of slushy snow that seeped into the otter's fur. Kojimaru laughed from where he'd hidden himself in the saddle he'd grown after he'd swapped places with a Yuki Bunshin the moment he'd seen Kawanari reaching for him.

"I'm going to turn you over my knee and paddle your behind for that trick, koneko," Kawanari promised as he shook the frozen water from his fur even as he used his katana to slice through the bridle on his face.

"You have to catch me first, fish face," Kojimaru shot back as poured more chakra into the saddle he'd made so that it started growing into vines that wrapped Kawanari up.

Kawanari burst into water just seconds later and Kojimaru twisted around and formed a pair of ice swords to block the attack the otter aimed at his back and leapt off of the saddle as it crashed to the floor. Their kenjutsu spar was short, fast, and furious as Kawanari put Kojimaru through his paces to make certain he hadn't forgotten anything since their last spar. It was a ritual the two of them went through each and every time Kojimaru summoned the one-eyed otter; bar the night of the kidnapping attempt on Hyuuga Hinata.

At the end of the spar, Kojimaru ended up pinned to the floor with all three of Kawanari's swords and six yards of heavy duty rope made from stripes of alligator hide. Kawanari hadn't escaped unscathed; the otter wearing a crown of pink ice flowers that were frozen to the fur on his head, his mustache weighted down with a hundred inch long icicles that clinked together with every exhale, and his rudder tied to his waist with flowering vines. Both teen and otter were rather winded and both of them were grinning at each other.

"Glad to see you haven't completely lost your touch after two months of slacking, koneko," Kawanari quipped as he reached up and began snapping the icicles from his face.

"I wasn't slacking, you old geezer; I was on a mission. And we both know you needed the long vacation after a full night of excitement; an otter of your advanced years has to be careful."

"Gaki," Kawanari gruffly barked as he retrieved one of his swords to slice through the vines holding his rudder.

"Are the two of you finished brawling like squabbling kits?" Bizekuro inquired from where he was lounging in a newly grown chair nibbling on a length of cherry wood. "We're supposed to be discussing a potential treaty between our clans and the Dog Clan."

"Inu-teichou should be here in about ten or fifteen minutes," Kojimaru stated as he slithered out of his bindings and stretched out his back.

"And the little neko-chan my son told me you had with you yesterday?"

"Currently gawking at you from the wooden platform that Kuma grew for her to sit on so we could protect her from your usual uncivilized greetings," Kojimaru replied as he gestured towards where Yugito was perched halfway up the wall on a wooden platform watching those on the floor. Kojimaru then pitched his voice as he called to the eleven year old, "You can come down now, youjiyo; the old geezer beside me needs a nap before he can cause any more trouble."

Kawanari reached out to cuff Kojimaru on the back of the head but missed when Kojimaru ducked down and danced back out of the way; the teen snickering at the otter. The artificial redhead was dancing about on one foot just seconds later when Yugito kicked him in the ankle in response to him calling her a little girl, again. Kawanari would join Kojimaru in hopping about like a loon when the little Jinchuuriki nailed him in the ankle next in response to him calling her neko-chan.

"Don't call me that!" Yugito growled as she scowled at both summoner and summons.

"It would seem your little neko-chan has sharp claws, koneko," Kawanari stated once his ankle stopped throbbing.

"My name is not neko-chan!" Yugito hissed as she attempted to kick Kawanari's other ankle only for the otter to stop her with a paw on her head.

"You might as well get used to him calling you annoying nicknames; fish-guts-for-breath here is so old he has trouble remembering his own name," Kojimaru dryly suggested as he stepped out of range of the otter's rudder. "I suppose I should at least attempt proper introductions though. Bizekuro and fish face, allow me to introduce you to the little stray that followed me home from my last mission; Ni'i Yugito. Yugito, meet my annoying otter mentor; Kawanari. And lounging behind me is Journeyman Gardener Bizekuro of the Beaver Clan. You'll both want to forget you ever heard her name as Ni'i Yugito will fade away into obscurity when she is reborn later this week."

"And you are aware of what she holds inside of her?" Kawanari asked as he shifted his paw so that he was cupping Yugito's chin before he leaned down to inspect the suddenly docile girl; the eleven year old had frozen the moment the otter had made a reference to the Nibi.

"Yes."

"You play with fire, Tora," Kawanari solemnly stated as he released Yugito and glanced up to meet Kojimaru's gaze; the otter addressing the teen by his ANBU code name for the first time. "Be careful you don't get burned."

"I've already been burned and it wasn't by a bijuu," Kojimaru replied in an emotionless tone. "Humans are by far the cruelest beings that walk this earth."

The fifteen year old then spun on his heel and stalked away from the others as he felt the air around him dropping rapidly; his emotions once again skittering out of his control. He was beginning to get annoyed with himself. It had been years since he'd had this much trouble keeping himself in check and here he was getting emotional at the drop of a kunai and over the stupidest things. And his oldest memories had been far too close to the surface ever since the Hokage had made the crack about him being put on this earth just to make the man's life difficult.

All of Kakashi and Kumade's prying hadn't exactly helped either.

Shoving his inner turmoil out of his mind, Kojimaru dropped down near the center of the room and sank into a meditative trance in order to center himself for the coming meeting. He stayed that way until he felt his captain's unique chakra enter the room. Once he knew that Inu was in the room, he let go of his trance and climbed to his feet and joined the others as Tenzou introduced the two summonses to the seventeen year old. Their teichou then summoned his entire ninken pack in a huge burst of smoke.

Kojimaru had a brief glimpse of eight furry bodies before he found himself buried beneath a dog pile when all eight trained ninken regressed to puppies as they mobbed him. The fifteen year old laughed and wriggled as he tried to escape cold noses and wet tongues.

"What the hell? Pakkun! Bisuke! Buru! Urushi! Shiba! Akino! Uhei! Guruko! What are you doing!?" Inu demanded as he tried to haul the overexcited dogs off of Kojimaru without much success.

"You might as well let them play and get it out of their system," Tenzou suggested with a long suffering sigh. "My brother has that affect on all ninken. You should see how crazy it gets when he visits the Inuzuka Compound. That kind of reaction is also why he has been banned from getting within fifty meters of the Aviary where the messenger birds are kept."

"That's not the point! My pack is fully trained!"

"And how many times did you summon them and train them around our koneko?" Kawanari inquired as he fingered the hilt on one of his blades and watched the chaos.

"This is the first time I've summoned my pack since these two brats were put on my team."

"That's why their behaving this way then; their canine nature is drawn to that part of Same no Kouji that calls to all nature. There are few creatures that can resist that call. In fact, the only creatures I know of that aren't affected by koneko's inner nature are sharks, gators, and crocs but they all get driven into a feeding frenzy the moment they catch a whiff of koneko's blood."

"You forgot to add grumpy wildcats to that list," Kojimaru added as he finally popped up from the middle of the dog pile and perched himself on top of the head of the big black bulldog that was part of Inu's pack. "Though, that might have been because I had woken it up from its nap at the time."

"And let me guess, you were out hunting and the cat tried to take a bite out of you as well?" Inu asked in a slightly snarky tone as he eyed the way his smaller pack members were still trying to reach Kojimaru.

"No, I wasn't out hunting at the time," Kojimaru retorted with a shiver. "I wasn't even four years old at the time and I'd been climbing a tree when I tripped over the thing. Damn cat took offense to me disturbing it and it tried to claw my face off."

"How'd you manage to escape without getting hurt?" Yugito asked from where she was hiding from the ninken behind Tenzou.

"I didn't; it clawed both my face and my arm before I threw myself out of the tree."

"Is that why you hide your face all of the time? Because of the scars?"

"Nope, I don't scar."

"Then why do you hide your face?"

"Same reason why we hide your face," Kojimaru replied as he dropped down off of the bulldog and gave the smaller dogs the attention they were looking for from him now that they weren't quite so rowdy.

It would take another twenty minutes before Inu's summoned ninken pack to settle down long enough for them to recall both their training and the reason they had been called. It was rather comical to see the looks on the dogs' faces the moment they realized that they were behaving like freshly weaned pups. Kojimaru hadn't helped matters when he took a couple of leaves out of his utility pouch and grew several sticks that he'd used to play fetch with the eight canines. Poor Inu was mortified over the behavior of his pack; he used to brag that he had the best trained ninken in the village.

Once everyone had settled down, Kojimaru served lunch and the group began discussing the conditions under which the three summoning clans would be willing to work together. It was a fairly anticlimactic discussion since Kakashi used his ninken pack for tracking, scouting, and sending messages while Tenzou called on his summonses for traps, excavation, and construction and Kojimaru called on the otters mostly for combat. The fact that all three clans were normally called for different reasons meant that there would be no fighting during a mission between two summonses attempting to do the same job.

Kojimaru ended up summoning Kawakaze towards the end of the meeting; mostly because the ancient otter just wanted to get out of the Holt for an hour. Inu's injured pride (due to his pack's behavior) was mollified when Kawakaze acted like an apprentice warrior on his first hunt as he immediately challenged Kojimaru to a spar upon his arrival. Kojimaru was more than a little embarrassed when he was soundly thrashed by the chief within ten minutes. The fifteen year old felt much better about his loss when his captain didn't even last five minutes against the old otter.

* * *

**Translations:** Japanese to English

Ayaka – Japanese girl's name meaning colorful flower (chosen as the name for Inoichi's wife)  
Bizekuro – seventh son of Bizezuumi, Journeyman Gardener; bizebaze (beaver) + kuro (black)  
Bizezuumi – the Chief of the Beaver Clan &amp; uncle to the twins; bizebaze (beaver) + mizuumi (lake)  
Kawakaze – Chief of the Otter Clan; kawauso (river otter) + kaze (wind)  
Kawanari – one-eyed otter; kawauso (river otter) + kaminari (thunder)  
Kawarashi – Kawanari's son; kawauso (river otter) + arashi (storm)  
Kawatsuki – female otter; kawauso (river otter) + tsuki (moon)  
Kinobori no Waza – Tree climbing  
Koneko – kitten  
Kuchiyose no Jutsu – Summoning Technique  
Neko – cat  
Ojisan/jisan – uncle  
Same no Kouji – Shark Bait (Kojimaru's nickname)  
Toumoku – chief/head/leader  
Umezuke – pickled plums that have not been dried (ume is a Japanese plum that is closely related to the apricot)  
Youjiyo – little girl

**Notes: **

Kakashi's Ninken Pack:

Pakkun (the talking pug)  
Shiba (the one with the black crest on his head)  
Bisuke (little one with tattoo on forehead)  
Akino (one with glasses)  
Guruko (little one with the hitai-ate on his forehead)  
Uhei (one with bandages)  
Urushi (the white one)  
Buru (the big black bulldog)

* * *

**11-16-15:** _Minor edits made to chapter to fix spelling/grammar mistakes and removed unnecessary author's notes._


	32. The Evaluation

**Disclaimer:** _All HP characters are the property of JKR, the WB, and respective publishing companies and all Naruto characters are the property of Masashi Kishimoto. This is nothing more than a simple FanFiction that I have written. I have made no money from this or any of the other stories I have posted on this or other sites._

**Warnings:** _Mild to moderate violence, character death, alternate universe (i.e. kiss canon goodbye), OCC behaviors and personalities, a number of original characters and obscure canon characters to flesh out family trees, random chosen last names to give a number of characters surnames, and who knows what else._

**AN:** _This story is self-beta'd; so there may be occasional grammatical or spelling errors that crop up every now and then and for those I apologize in advance._

* * *

Chapter Thirty-Two: The Evaluation

_October 23, 0295 AtD, 06:59 AM  
Konohagakure no Sato, Hi no Kuni_

Kojimaru silently paced alongside of Yugito as Tenzou led the way to the training rooms; his mind fully focused on which chakra control exercise he was going to teach Yugito next now that she'd reached the point where she could walk up and down the wall without slipping off or being blasted backwards. He would still have her practice the wall walking for an hour or so each day but that alone wouldn't be enough to completely bring her chakra output back under her control; she would need to work on all aspects of her control, not just one.

He was just contemplating the merits of teaching her Suimen Hokou no Waza versus teaching her to make chakra strings when their small group was waylaid by Kisuke in his Kirin mask.

"Tora, you and your little stray have been summoned to Kasai's office," Kisuke declared without preamble the moment he caught up with the trio.

"Just the two of us?" Kojimaru inquired with a frown beneath his mask as he cut his eyes towards Tenzou.

"Hai; just the two of you."

"I'll walk you both down and we can ask how long your meeting will take so I know when to come back and collect the two of you," Tenzou offered as the three of them automatically changed directions in order to make their way down to Kasai's office. "We'll see you later, Kirin-teichou."

Kojimaru nodded absently even as he silently wondered what Kasai would want with him and Yugito. It only took him a couple of minutes to reach the conclusion that it probably had something to do with Yugito's disguise seals. Tenzou reached the same conclusion at the same time and the two teens glanced at one another to share that information only to immediately realize that they both already knew. Kojimaru nodded once before returning his gaze forward as they three of them navigated the maze of halls that made up the ANBU Facility.

They reached the commander's office just eight minutes later and Kojimaru rapped sharply on the door before he opened it up to usher Yugito inside while Tenzou only stuck his head into the room. Inside, they found Jiraiya (which confirmed their theory behind the reason for the meeting) and Kasai as well as Yagi, Shikaku, and Inoichi. Kojimaru tilted his head to one side in confusion since he couldn't see any reason for Inoichi and Shikaku to be present before he dismissed their presence as Tenzou addressed Kasai.

"Ohayou, Kasai-sama; can you tell me how long your meeting is going to last so that I know when I need to come back to collect my partner and our charge?"

"There will be no need for you to return; your charge is being reassigned to a trainer from this point forward. You are free to leave the Facility as your squad has been given the next two weeks off," Kasai replied as he briefly glanced in Tenzou's direction.

"Wakatta, Kasai-sama," Tenzou acknowledged before he turned to Kojimaru. "I'll wait for you in my room."

"Close the door on your way out, Kuma," Kasai ordered as the teen withdrew his head.

The moment the door clicked shut, Jiraiya activated a privacy barrier that he had prepared ahead of time. The man then gestured to Yugito as he addressed Kojimaru, "Go ahead and remove her disguise."

Kojimaru nodded as he reached over to tap Yugito on the head as he released a small pulse of chakra that unraveled the Mokuton: Kamen no Jutsu that was masking her current appearance. He then glanced longingly at the door in the hopes that he would be dismissed now so that he could go home and spend some quality time with his godfather, who had been due to return from his recent mission last night.

"Have a seat, Yugito-chan; we're going to be applying the seals that will change the color of your eyes and hair," Jiraiya instructed next as he waved his hand towards a chair that was sitting in the middle of the room. "Gaki, you're going to need to come over here and practice the seals that you will be applying to your fan-girl for a couple of minutes to insure that you can replicate them accurately enough."

"Nani? Why am I going to be the one to apply the seals?"

"Applying additional seals to a Jinchuuriki is risky business," Jiraiya reminded the teen even as he snagged Kojimaru's arm and gently propelled him towards the desk where Kasai had a blank scroll, paint brush, ink, and the newly designed Concealment Seal spread out. "And while I'm confident that my skills are more than adequate enough to handle a little thing like this; it was decided that you would be the one to place the seals since the Nibi is still rather fond of you right now. You also have experience on placing this type of seal on another person."

"While he's doing that, you will need to come up with a new name, Ni'i-chan; as from this point forward, Ni'i Yugito will no longer exist," Kasai stated as Kojimaru picked up the copy of the seal he was being asked to apply to Yugito.

Kojimaru tuned out the rest of the discussion as he ran his eyes over the seal in his hand; his mind automatically comparing it to the seal on his forehead and the one on Tenzou's forehead. He easily recognized several portions of the seal as being near identical to his seal and he thought maybe those portions were the ones that altered other people's perception of his chakra in order to hide the corrupted nature of his chakra – since the Nibi's chakra would need to be masked as well.

He hummed thoughtfully to himself upon that realization as he set the seal back on the desk upside down and picked up the paintbrush next. He then closed his eyes for a moment and canted his head to one side as he pulled the memory of the new seal up in his mind in order to mentally inspect it from every angle before he reopened his eyes, dipped the tip of the paintbrush in the ink, and drew the seal from memory. Once he was finished, he turned the original seal back over and inspected his copy for mistakes before he made his second attempt.

He would end up drawing the seal more than a hundred different times before he could consistently replicate the seal in its entirety. He then drew the seal out another one hundred times before Jiraiya declared his copies acceptable enough to be deemed usable. Kasai ordered him to draw it yet another hundred times to make certain that the seal pattern was both locked into his mind and that he could consistently draw the seal from memory alone.

Kojimaru would have complained if not for his past experience with similar activities when he and Tenzou had first learned how to recreate their disguise seals. Still, by the time both men agreed that Kojimaru's work was good enough for him to apply the seal to Yugito, his hand and wrist were more than a little sore from the tedious practice. Kojimaru was given five minutes to rest his hand at that point while Jiraiya cleaned off Yugito's forehead with a bit of isopropyl alcohol.

"Have you decided on a new name yet?" Kasai inquired and Kojimaru turned his attention to his little stalker out of curiosity in order to hear her answer.

"No, can Tora give me a name instead? That way he'll be able to remember my name instead of calling me 'little girl' all of the time."

"Tora…?" Kasai prompted around a chuckle of amusement.

"I will see what I can come up with after I apply the seals so that I can try and fit the name to her disguise."

"Fair enough; have you had enough time to rest your wrist?"

"Hai, the cramps faded three minutes ago."

"Then you may proceed with the application."

Kojimaru nodded as he grabbed the paintbrush he'd used to practice the seal and dug out the jar of sealing ink he carried in his utility pouch before he grew a wooden stool to sit on. He then murmured a quiet request for Yugito to hold still while he drew the seal on her forehead. It only took him five minutes to draw the seal and another two minutes for Kasai and Jiraiya to inspect his work before they allowed him to activate the seal. Yugito shivered as her hair darkened to a shade of red that matched the color of his hair when his own seals were active while her eyes turned a dark grayish-brown.

The fifteen year old jerked back as if he'd been burned the moment his brain registered the color of Yugito's hair and he let out a low whine in the back of his throat as her new appearance stirred the broken shards of his earliest memories. He immediately slammed a mental wall down on those old memories of his mother's death when he felt the air around him grow icy; effectively cutting off his emotions. He then stepped away from the eleven year old and reabsorbed the stool he'd grown before he put away his ink and passed the paintbrush back to Kasai.

"Can I see what I look like?" Yugito asked curiously as she fingered the tip of the blood-red rope of tightly braided locks that was now her hair.

Kojimaru obliged the girl by growing a sheet of ice that doubled as a mirror and he watched her lean towards the mirror to inspect every inch of her face before she turned both left and right to study her profile. Something in his heart ached as he watched her pose in front of the ice mirror and he nearly lost control of his emotions a second time as he was once again struck by the resemblance of the girl to his dead mother; the only thing out of place was the color of her eyes.

"Have you got a name for your stray yet, Tora?" Kasai inquired; his voice drawing Kojimaru out of his troubled thoughts.

Kojimaru flinched as the inquiry drew forth another shard of memory from the night of his mother's death and he heard a long forgotten voice echo through his mind accompanied by a familiar flash of acid green light…

"_Lily, it's him! He's here!_"

Kojimaru pressed a hand over his mask in response to the sudden spike of pain that had accompanied the incomplete memory due to his mind automatically translating the foreign string of words into Japanese. He waited for both the memory and the pain to fade before he quietly answered, "Yuri."

Yugito glanced briefly in his direction before she returned her eyes to her reflection, tipped her head to one side, and repeated, "Yuri, Yuri… Yuri… Why Yuri? I don't look anything like a flower."

"Yuri was my mother's name," Kojimaru admitted as his green eyes unknowingly turned haunted. He then stepped up beside the eleven year old so that his reflection joined hers in the mirror as he reached out to touch a lock of Yugito's hair that had escaped the top of her braid. After a moment he hesitantly explained, "Her hair was long, like yours, and the same color red that yours is now."

The fifteen year old then closed off his emotions once more and forced his voice to sound rather light and carefree as he blandly added, "And for the record, all little girls resemble flower buds that will one day bloom into beautiful flowers but if you don't like the name, you don't have to use it; it was just a suggestion."

"Won't your okaasan be upset that you gave me her name?"

"No, she's dead; she died a long, long time ago."

"Oh, do you…?"

"I hate to break up your little discussion but we're on a bit of a tight schedule here and I've got other business to attend to today," Kasai interjected before Yugito could finish her question. "So, I need to know whether or not you are willing to use the name Tora chose or if you want us to come up with something else."

Yugito closed her eyes for a moment as she mouthed the name several times to herself before she reopened her eyes to briefly meet Kojimaru's eyes through his mask as she replied, "I will take the precious name that Tora gifted to me."

"Very well then, from this moment forward you shall be known as Yuri," Kasai acknowledged as he wrote the new name down on the file he had open on his desk. "Now that that is taken care of, allow me to introduce you to your new trainer; Yagi-teichou. He is going to spend the next six months training you. At the end of those six months, I will be testing you to see if your skills are on par with an Academy Graduate. Once I've assessed your skill levels, you will either be presented with your hitai-ate or be sent through another six months of training."

"Will I still be able to train with Tora?" the newly named Yuri demanded as she shot a nervous glance in Yagi's direction.

"That will depend on Tora's schedule but I am certain you will still see him from time to time," Kasai replied with a soft snort of amusement. "Did you have any other questions about your training?"

"Just one; is part of my training going to include curing me of my virginity?"

Kojimaru's eyes snapped to Yugito… or rather Yuri in horror before he whipped his head around to glare at Kasai and Yagi in warning as the air around him dropped several degrees.

"No, child; I have no interest in bedding little girls or in waking up with splinters in uncomfortable places," Yagi dryly answered in Kasai's place as he purposefully held Kojimaru's gaze. "We don't forcefully 'cure' any of our kunoichi of their virginity regardless of their age. I will make arrangements with one of the female trainers on the staff to teach you the methods our kunoichi use to deal with that bit of business without the need to involve a man. I am curious though, out of all the questions you could have asked, why did you ask that one?"

"My previous handler used to brag about how he was going to take my virginity as soon as I had my first menses and you're a man."

"No, Yagi-teichou isn't a man; he's a slave driver," Kojimaru countered with a shudder. "He'll have you up at five every morning and he'll stuff your brain so full of facts that your ears will bleed before he sends you through The Gauntlet on an empty stomach without so much as a drop of tea. And he'll not let you crawl into bed each night until well after midnight. You'll be so sore that your bruises will have bruises for weeks."

"Was that a request for a refresher course, Tora?" Yagi inquired as he propped his hands on his hips and near glared at Kojimaru from beneath his mask.

"No sir, teichou. I was just preparing Yugi… Yu…Yuri-chan for the hell that is your personal training program."

"Smart ass," Yagi gruffly barked in fond exasperation.

"Yagi-teichou was your handler?" Yuri inquired with blatant curiosity as she studied Yagi with far more interest now.

"No, Yagi-teichou is just one of many trainers that cracked the whip during our endless training sessions. Technically, my brother and I never really had a handler assigned to us but if anyone would qualify as our handler, it would have to be Kasai-sama."

"That's only because no one else could handle the two of you in large doses," Shikaku lazily interjected from where he was propped up against the wall looking half asleep and Kojimaru simply rolled his eyes at his former babysitter.

"Did you have any other questions, Yuri-chan?" Kasai asked around yet another chuckle.

"No."

"Then I will leave you in Yagi's capable hands."

"Come along, child; I wish to assess your current levels so I can put together a proper training program for you," Yagi instructed as he headed for the door the moment Jiraiya dropped the privacy barrier.

Kojimaru automatically made to follow the pair after he dispelled the ice mirror he'd made only to find himself caught up in Shikaku's Shadow Bind before he'd taken more than a single step. The fifteen year old frowned beneath his mask and glanced back at the Jounin as he wondered what he wanted this time only for Shikaku to press his lips together and look away from him. Worry filled Kojimaru in response to Shikaku's reaction as the man had never ever turned away from him like that before.

A knot filled the teen's stomach when his teichou entered the room less than a minute after Yagi and Yugi… no, he had to remember to think of her as Yuri now… had left. His thoughts immediately went to his godfather and fear made him blanch beneath his mask as he jumped to the horrible conclusion that something had happened to his guardian during his latest mission. That first memory of seeing Kosuke laid up in the hospital with part of his left leg amputated assaulted him for a moment and he felt sick to his stomach as he forced the memory back into the darkest depths of his mind.

His fear for his godfather still made him desperately demand, "Ojisan…?"

"Is fine," Kasai answered as Jiraiya raised a new privacy barrier.

"Yokatta," Kojimaru breathed as he let his shoulders slump in relief. He then furrowed his brow in confusion before he glanced in Shikaku's direction as he asked, "If you didn't keep me back to inform me of some disaster befalling my… guardian, then what is this about?"

"Sit down and remove your mask, Tora; there is much we have to discuss," Kasai ordered as he jabbed a finger at the chair that Yu…Yuri had sat in earlier. Kojimaru hesitated to comply for all of two seconds due to the confusion he felt over what was going on before he obeyed the command out of habit. As soon as his rear was planted on the chair and his mask tucked away in his utility pouch, Kasai eyed him for a moment before he asked, "How long have you known the full details of those experiments that Orochimaru used your blood in?"

"Since a few days after my brother and I were officially sworn in as members of the Corps," Kojimaru replied with a scowl due to the topic that Kasai had chosen to discuss.

"Is there any particular reason why you felt the need to dig up that information?" Inoichi inquired in a concerned tone.

"I didn't… not at first. I was originally just looking for any recent information on where Orochimaru was now and what he was doing so I'd know which places Kuma and I needed to avoid when taking missions out of the village. I found the reports detailing his experiments instead and even then, I hadn't intended to read through any of it until I noticed that the first report was on test subject one-eighty-one. Once I started reading, I just couldn't stop."

"How much of that information did you share with Kuma?"

"None."

"Why?" Kakashi asked in an almost confused tone. "Based on what you told me, the two of you share everything else; so why not share what you learned about Orochimaru's experiments?"

"And just how the hell was I supposed to tell my brother that it was my fault that he and sixty-seven other children were stolen from their homes and used in Orochimaru's damn experiments!?" Kojimaru angrily yelled in reply as he jumped up out of his chair in a cloud of ice crystals when his emotions skated out of his control yet again and dropped the temperature in the room a good twenty degrees.

"How exactly did you arrive at the conclusion that it was in any way your fault that Orochimaru began using children for his experiments?" Inoichi demanded as he frowned at Kojimaru.

"I read every single one of the reports on the intensive investigation that took place in the aftermath of the destruction I wrought the night Orochimaru forcefully activated my Mokuton! I know full well that the traitor had been on the verge of abandoning his wretched Kekkei Genkai experiments right up until he found me! If not for me, then he never would have had a reason to target those other children!"

"You don't know that," Jiraiya stated as he dropped both hands on Kojimaru's shoulders, pulled him back down onto the chair, and held him there. "For all you know, he would have come to the conclusion that his test subjects were too old even if he hadn't found you that night. He might have walked away from his twisted little projects for a week or two but he would have been right back at it once he had had enough time to think of a new direction from which to approach the apparent wall he'd hit in his research. Since you read the reports, then you'll know his experiments were something he'd been working on for years before he found you."

"That still doesn't change the fact that it was my blood that killed thirty-three of the children he'd stolen!"

"Stop thinking that his experiments were all about you," Jiraiya barked as he let go of Kojimaru so he could slap him on the back of the head. "I hate to break it to you, gaki; but you were never that significant in Orochimaru's mind. Sure, he stole your blood and used it for his own ends but you are hardly the only person whose blood he stole; or have you forgotten the fact that you have the blood of the Shodai Hokage and some unnamed member of the Yuki Clan flowing through your veins as well?"

"As if I could ever forget," Kojimaru countered bitterly as a twist of his hands caused a knee-high ice-tiger to pour from his hands before it was swallowed whole by the floor boards that had come to life beneath his direction.

"If what you had learned regarding the traitor's experiments has been bothering you so much; why didn't you come see me to discuss what you'd learned?" Inoichi chided with no little exasperation.

Kojimaru sighed and scrubbed at his face for a moment before he dropped his hands and answered, "It's not supposed to bother me. I'm supposed to be over it. I've had twelve years to get over it. And as much as I hate Orochimaru, I wouldn't change my life for anything because changing my life would mean loosing the family I found here. It was far easier to just not think about the teme and what he had done to us when I didn't really know what had been done to us. Even after I read the reports I tried not to think about it. I just…"

"Just what…?" Kasai prompted when Kojimaru trailed off.

"I don't know. I've felt all out of sorts since we got back from Kumo. No, that's not quite true; things have been messed up since my birthday this year. And things only got worse after we got back from Kumo. Things that never bothered me before now bother me for no apparent reason. It's… irritating. I hate feeling like I'm off balance."

"None of that explains why you didn't come to me with what you learned about Orochimaru's experiments," Inoichi pointed out. "You've never hesitated to speak to me of those things that bothered you in the past; so what changed?"

"It just never seemed important and like I said, I didn't really want to think about it."

"Why do you think that your feelings regarding what you learned from the reports on Orochimaru's experiments aren't important?"

"Because Orochimaru has always been unimportant and the only time I really think about him is when someone else brings him up first or if my memories of him are triggered by something; such as when Kuma and I were locked up in the traitor's old labs during our initiation test," Kojimaru replied with a shrug.

"You think Orochimaru is unimportant?" Kakashi repeated in shock and Kojimaru didn't need to see under his teichou's mask to know the man was gaping at him.

"Yes…?" Kojimaru answered uncertainly even as part of him insisted that there was something wrong with that answer.

"If Orochimaru is unimportant, then why were you concerned enough to go hunting for information on his last known location?" Shikaku carefully asked as he joined the conversation for the first time since Yagi-teichou had dragged Yuri off to evaluate her skills.

"So there would be less of a chance that we would run into him on a mission because he's not supposed to know that Kuma and I are still alive."

"Why did you wait so long to look up that kind of information? Shouldn't that have been something you'd been keeping track of from the moment you earned your hitai-ate?" Inoichi demanded as he frowned at Kojimaru.

"I never thought about looking for information on him until I saw his dossier in the Bingo Book that we were issued after Kuma and I had earned our masks. And I didn't really have to worry about him before we joined the Corps since ojisan and sensei both promised to protect us from him."

"Mendoukusei," Shikaku complained as soon as Kojimaru finished answering the questions. "Kasai, your predecessor made a huge miscalculation when he failed to consider the long-term effects of the seal he'd designed to encourage Tora to ignore the anger that Orochimaru incited in him. That or he forgot to include the removal of said seal amongst his many contingency plans since that seal probably should have been removed once Tora was old enough to control his temper."

"But the only seals Kasai-sama that ever applied to me was the one to hide my hair and eyes and the one that alters my chakra signature," Kojimaru protested as he glanced between his former babysitter and his commander.

"Chigau," Jiraiya corrected as he dropped a hand on Kojimaru's head. "Torifu had designed a seal to discourage you from growing angry enough to draw on your Kekkei Genkai each time you heard Orochimaru's name because the constant loss of control would have drawn far too much attention to you."

"Do you believe that the seal is in any way responsible for the recent issues that Tora has been having with his emotional control lately?" Kasai inquired as he eyed Kojimaru for a moment before he moved his gaze beyond the teen to the man standing behind Kojimaru's chair.

"It's possible," Jiraiya allowed as he pulled Kojimaru's head backwards in order to light up the seal in question so he could study it yet again. "It's also possible that the gaki's fluctuating hormones due to the rapid onset of puberty are wrecking havoc with the seal and in turn causing the seal to exacerbate his mood swings."

"Can you remove the seal?"

"Not without removing the entire array; the individual seals are far too integrated to draw just one of them out without destabilizing the entire thing," Jiraiya answered as he released both the viewing jutsu and Kojimaru's head. "I can, however, redesign the seal to remove that bit by basing it off of the seal that the other gaki wears and the one I drew for his little fan-girl."

"How long will that take?" Kasai demanded as he reached for the large scroll that contained the master duty roster for the active members of the ANBU Corps.

"An hour at most, since I already did it once for the gaki's fan-girl."

"Go ahead and start working on that then."

"Tora's current emotional control, tenuous as it has been these past few weeks, will likely degrade further once the seal has been removed due to the number of years that seal has been affecting his thoughts and emotions," Inoichi interjected and Kojimaru crossed his arms in irritation at the implication that he wouldn't be able to control himself without a seal helping him. "I would recommend doubling the vacation time you allotted his squad in order to allow him enough time to adjust to the mental changes he can expect due to the complete removal of the seal."

"If Tora is still having issues adjusting to the seal's removal at the end of the original two weeks Squad Inu was given off, I will simply suspend him from active duty until he gets his head screwed on right," Kasai countered without giving the suggestion more than a passing thought and Kojimaru scowled in response to the implied threat that he would be removed from Inu's team indefinitely and therefore separated from Tenzou. "While we are waiting for Jiraiya to rework the seal; the rest of us can wrap things up since this discussion has already eaten up too much of my time."

Kasai then leaned forward to pin Kojimaru in place with an annoyed glare as he asked, "Why in the hell did I only just now learn that you knew your mother's name and what she looks like? That was information that could have been used to pinpoint your country of origin and potentially gather information on your inborn healing ability."

"The only memories I have of either of my parents are broken bits and pieces that make absolutely no sense," Kojimaru retorted as he crossed his arms and hunched his shoulders. "The only thing I ever really knew about my mother was that she had blood red hair and eyes like mine and that she was dead. Until I saw Yugito with red hair, I hadn't even known that I had ever heard my mother's name spoken. Even then, it wasn't until you demanded to know if I'd come up with a new name for her that the memory of my mother's name surfaced."

"Why haven't you allowed Inoichi to go in and piece those memories back together for you?"

"He's too young for me to repair his memories and the chances that doing so will cause irreparable damage to his brain are still too high due to the extensive damage that had been done to those memories," Inoichi answered in Kojimaru's place. "The earliest I would even consider making an attempt to reconstruct his earliest memories would be after his eighteenth birthday."

"Why would his age matter? I know for a fact that your family has gone in to repair damaged memories on individuals that hadn't yet reached their fourteenth birthday in the past."

"The normal rules don't apply when it comes to fiddling with Tora's mind and memories. Not only is he forced to relive those memories I view, he has far more control over his mind than most others do and even the smallest shifts in his emotions during the replay of those memories tends to interfere with the jutsu. Attempting to reconstruct his memories under such conditions could potentially see both of our minds being destroyed in the backlash. On top of that, prolonged use of my clan techniques has consistently left him with severe migraines."

"Do you have the same issues when viewing Kuma's memories?"

"No; though he too tends to develop serious headaches if I spend more than a half an hour viewing his memories. Based upon the data I have collected through the years I've known both boys, I've come to the conclusion that the physical tampering Orochimaru did to their brains is responsible for the heightened sensitivity both boys experience; which would also explain why my jutsu affect Tora more so than Kuma since Orochimaru did significantly more tampering in Tora's case due to the traitor using him in a higher number of experiments."

"And the gaki had the nerve to make cracks about my mind," Jiraiya harrumphed as he glanced up from his seal work to shoot Kojimaru a mock glare.

"Don't worry, Jiraiya; everyone knows you're mind is very special," Kasai snarked and Kojimaru couldn't help but snicker because his commander had basically just made the same crack he had about Jiraiya's mind.

"Humpf, I'll have you know my mind is worth millions!" Jiraiya fired back as he shot the masked commander a sour look before he returned his attention to the seal he was modifying.

"That's only because it's still working after you've taken a million or two punches to the face and head from annoyed kunoichi," Kakashi drawled in an amused tone.

"Urusai, gaki; you're still young enough for me to turn over my knee."

"What is it with you and your obsession with spanking boys that are more than half your age?" Kojimaru wondered out loud as he watched Kakashi cross his arms over his chest in annoyance. "Is that one of your fetishes or something?"

"I'm not interested in boys, damn it! I am a lover of ladies!"

"But I've never heard you threaten to spank any girls…"

"One does not spank a lady!"

"I know at least a dozen kunoichi that would disagree with you there," Kakashi interjected with a snort.

"Kunoichi are an entirely different animal," Jiraiya airily retorted as he straightened up from where he'd been leaning over Kasai's desk while redesigning Kojimaru's disguise seal.

"Is that because they hit twice as hard as a civilian and are twice as likely to try to kill you if they catch you peeping on them?" Inoichi inquired as he glanced up from the scroll he'd been writing in.

"I don't want to hear that from you when I know for a fact that you've hitched a ride into the women's side of the hot springs in your wife's mind a time or two," Jiraiya deadpanned as he shot the blond an annoyed glare.

"I never pegged you for a pervert, Inoichi," Kojimaru stated as he snapped his head around to stare at the man when he didn't automatically deny the accusation.

"Get used to it, kid; all men are perverts," Jiraiya as he snagged the hand drawn copy of the new seal off of the desk and approached Kojimaru. "Some of us are just better at hiding it than others." He then slapped the new seal into Kojimaru's hand and ordered, "Go practice drawing that so you can replace your seal once I've removed it."

"I'd rather have Tora draw my seal again," Kojimaru murmured as he glanced down that the newly drawn seal in his hand and compared it to the memory of the seal he currently wore so he could pick out the subtle changes that had been made to the array. "Learning how to draw the mirror image of a seal is a hassle I'd rather avoid if at all possible."

"You still need to know how to draw the seal regardless of who applies it," Kasai stated as he tossed the paint brush Kojimaru had used earlier at his head and signaled for Jiraiya to drop the barrier. "So you might as well start practicing while you send a clone to fetch your less annoying half."

Kojimaru huffed in annoyance as he snagged the paint brush out of the air before it could hit him in the face. He then grew himself a small table and dug into his utility pouch for a bottle of ordinary ink, a blank scroll, and a leaf. A quick application of chakra to the leaf saw a Moku Bunshin forming and he sent the clone off to fetch Tenzou before he began practicing the seal as ordered. The process of memorizing and perfecting the new seal took far less time than it had for him to deal with Yuri's seal since it was so similar to his current seal and the seal that his brother wore despite the need for him to need to draw the mirror image of the seal as well as the original seal.

His latest recreation of the seal had just been deemed adequate when a knock sounded on the office door five seconds before Tenzou phased through up through the floor. Kasai shot an annoyed glare at his brother for circumventing the door entirely but refrained from taking him to task for it right now in favor of setting Tenzou to sketching out Kojimaru's new seal while Jiraiya removed the old seal. Kojimaru shifted uncomfortably in the chair as Jiraiya shoved his makeshift table out of the way and snagged hold of his chin in one hand; the Sennin had been far too grabby this morning.

Ignoring the uncomfortable heat of the Sennin's hand on his face, Kojimaru closed his eyes and braced himself for the removal process as Jiraiya placed his index and middle fingers of his other hand over the center of the unseen seal on Kojimaru's forehead. A heartbeat later, Kojimaru felt the searing pain of Jiraiya forcefully overloading the seal with his chakra in order to shatter the seal.

The fifteen year old let out a single grunt in response to pain but gave no other indication that he even felt the same level of pain that had made Yuri scream when her Limiter Seal had been removed in the same fashion five days earlier. Two minutes later, he felt the seal snap before it dissolved at the same instant as Jiraiya stopped pouring his chakra into the seal. On the heels of the seal's removal, Kojimaru once again felt something in his mind unraveling and it didn't take much for him to realize that the odd feeling was the seal's influence over his mind being removed.

"Do you need anything for the pain?" Inoichi inquired as moved up beside Kojimaru and dropped a hand on his shoulder.

"Nah, the pain's already gone."

"Are you certain that the seal influencing his mind has been removed completely?" Kasai inquired as he looked up from his inspection of the seal copies that Tenzou had drawn.

"Only one way to be certain," Jiraiya replied as he reached around Kojimaru and grabbed hold of Inoichi before he dragged the blond away from the seated teen. "Oi, gaki; why don't you tell us how you really feel about Orochimaru?"

As soon as Kojimaru heard the traitor's name, he snarled as nearly thirteen years of suppressed rage surged through him in the blink of an eye. Memories of the agony he'd suffered at the hands of the traitorous Sannin soon mixed with his memories of the clinical reports he'd read detailing the sordid details of what had been done to him and the other orphans that had been used in Orochimaru's experiments and sent his fury to new heights. Lost as he was in his anger, Kojimaru never noticed the temperature of the room dropping to below freezing as his Hyouton wrecked Kasai's office.

* * *

**Translations:** Japanese to English

Suimen Hokou no Waza – Water Walking  
Wakatta – I understand/understood  
Yuri – girl's name meaning Lily  
Yokatta – an expression of relief, usually translates as 'I'm so glad' or 'thank goodness!'

* * *

**AN:** _Whew; this chapter tried to kill me while writing it. For the longest time I was stuck right at the point where I kicked the newly renamed Yugito/Yuri out of the office. Well, that's not quite true I originally had this chapter and the next one fully written but I was unhappy with it and so re-wrote most of this chapter and all of the next chapter. I really toned back the angst too. So I don't want to hear/read any complaints about that. _

_Anywho, I still have another three chapters already written for this arc with another one or two more to go and I'll be tossing them up one a night or one every other night (depends on whether or not I get sucked into my writing-zone by my muse) until the arc is completely posted. There will be a lot of information that will clear up a few seeming oddities from earlier in the story and quite a bit more angst before things pick back up action wise. You can also expect to see things from quite a few different POVs so as to give a clearer picture of how people see Kojimaru(Harry) &amp; Tenzou._

_The last thing I wanted to point out was that chapters 1-14 have been replaced with edited/revised chapters and that chapters 15-28 will be replaced tomorrow and chapters 29-31 being replaced on Monday. You don't have to go back and re-read everything since I didn't change the plot or alter any subplots; mostly I just corrected my earlier mistakes and reworded those bits and pieces that I was unhappy with. I did add some minor content (such as revising the placement test that Kojimaru took on his first day at the Civilian's Academy) but those little bits aren't all that important in the long run. ~ Jenn_


	33. The Repercussions

**Disclaimer:** _All HP characters are the property of JKR, the WB, and respective publishing companies and all Naruto characters are the property of Masashi Kishimoto. This is nothing more than a simple FanFiction that I have written. I have made no money from this or any of the other stories I have posted on this or other sites._

**Warnings:** _Mild to moderate violence, character death, alternate universe (i.e. kiss canon goodbye), OCC behaviors and personalities, a number of original characters and obscure canon characters to flesh out family trees, random chosen last names to give a number of characters surnames, and who knows what else._

**AN:** _This story is self-beta'd; so there may be occasional grammatical or spelling errors that crop up every now and then and for those I apologize in advance._

* * *

Chapter Thirty-Three: The Repercussions

_October 23, 0295 AtD, 12:09 PM  
Konohagakure no Sato, Hi no Kuni_

"Oi, gaki; why don't you tell us how you really feel about Orochimaru?"

Tenzou sensed that things were going to get ugly real fast even before Jiraiya had finished asking his question. That split second's warning allowed him just enough time to slam his hands down on the floor at his feet in order to grow the thickest, densest wall he could to block off the half of Kasai's office where Kojimaru was seated. Even then, several razor sharp spikes of ice still managed to slice through his wooden shield as easily as hot knife through butter. The wall had, at least, prevented anyone from being skewered by Kojimaru's out of control Hyouton.

"You, idiotic bonehead," Kasai irritably snapped as he smacked Jiraiya upside the head. "Why the hell couldn't you have dragged him off to one of the training rooms before you purposefully set him off!?"

"I didn't think he'd lose it that bad; the only other time I saw him flip out over my teammate's name, he didn't do more than cover himself and the bed he'd been on in hoarfrost."

"Did it ever occur to you that the reason why his past reaction to hearing Orochimaru's name was so weak that time was due to the fact that he was only three years old at the time?" Inoichi demanded as he too slapped the white haired shinobi upside the head. "His chakra reserves alone are at least fifteen times larger than they were back then! And that's not even taking into consideration the fact that he didn't fully activate both of his elemental Kekkei Genkai until six months _after_ he had been found."

"There's also the fact that he's been actively honing the deadlier aspects of his Kekkei Genkai for almost ten years," Shikaku added in an annoyed tone from where he was still propped up against the wall eyeing the ice spike that would have punched through his stomach if not for Tenzou's wall partially obstructing it.

Tenzou stopped listening to the others chastise the Sennin at that point as he felt Kojimaru's chakra surging once again; the twisted wrongness of his unmasked chakra signature sliding across his senses like oil over water and making his blood twist and shiver. He dove into his wall a heartbeat later and headed for the ceiling; sliding around those spikes of ice that had pierced the dense wood. Once he had transferred himself into the heavy beams that supported the floor of the room that sat above Kasai's office, he deftly navigated his way to the spot directly above Kojimaru's position.

He dropped down out of the ceiling as soon as he sensed he was directly above his brother and landed lightly on the back of the chair Kojimaru was still sitting in. He then crouched down to wrap his arms around Kojimaru and leaned down so his mouth was right beside Kojimaru's ear as he quietly murmured, "Enough, Kojimaru; he's not here. We're safe now. He can't hurt us any more. He's not worth it; he's not important. He's just one more traitor that will be hunted down and executed."

Kojimaru stiffened in his arms and for a brief moment Tenzou worried that his brother hadn't heard him through the torrent of rage he could sense surging through the green-eyed teen's blood. He needn't have worried; Kojimaru's anger vanished just as suddenly as it had appeared just a split second later and the other boy sagged in his arms. Tenzou barely started to loosen his hold on the other teen when Kojimaru twisted in the chair to bury his face against Tenzou's chest before he began apologizing over and over again in hoarse whisper that Tenzou had to strain to hear.

"Shush, there's no reason for you to apologize for that," Tenzou ordered after listening to the guilt riddled litany for nearly a full minute while he tried to pick apart the jumbled emotions and the vague, ghost-like impressions of tangled thoughts he sensed pouring from his brother. "It wasn't your fault. I never blamed you. You didn't ask him to use any of us like that."

The brown-eyed teen felt more than a little exasperated when the next impression he got from Kojimaru was of pain washed in the coppery feel of blood; an obvious reference to the fact that Orochimaru had used Kojimaru's blood in at least one series of experiments that had been performed on Tenzou. His brother was far too stubborn for his own good sometimes. The swift application of a few splinters in tender places drew a yelp from his brother and earned him ice crystals down the back of his uniform but at least his brother was no longer wallowing in misplaced guilt for something he had no control over.

"Now that you're no longer being an idiot, you might want to fix Kasai's office before he decides to take the payment for the mess out of your hide," Tenzou drawled as he shifted on his awkward perch so that his brother could see the tightly packed forest of ice spikes that had filled most of the room.

Kojimaru let out a gusty sigh as he glanced at the mess he'd made before he sat back and scrubbed at his face for a moment to dislodge the frozen tears that clung to his face. He then slapped his hand against the nearest spike of ice and channeled a burst of chakra into the network of deadly constructs. Tenzou ignored the oily feel of Kojimaru's unaltered chakra signature sliding over his senses as he watched every single ice spike collapse as his brother rendered his ice to water. The water would evaporate less than a minute later as Kojimaru drew his chakra from the frigid fluid.

Tenzou climbed down off the chair at that point and strode over to the protective wall he'd grown earlier so that he could take it down now that it was no longer needed. Behind him, Kojimaru started to coax the floorboards to heal themselves back into proper shape where the below freezing temperature and weight of his ice had damaged the floor. A brief glance around the room revealed that his brother would probably need a little help in cleaning up due to the sheer number of holes that now littered the walls and ceiling.

"Good work, Kuma; it's nice to know that your generation of shinobi has a bit more common sense than the previous generation," Kasai gruffly stated the moment Tenzou had finished reabsorbing the Mokuton wall he'd grown. "Were you injured in your efforts to calm your more temperamental half down?"

"Tora would never hurt me," Tenzou all but growled in response to the implication that his brother would intentionally or even accidentally harm him.

"Accidents happen; and not even you can predict every single potential reaction that Tora is likely to have in response to any given situation," Inoichi logically pointed out as he observed Kojimaru's efforts to clean up his messes.

Tenzou didn't bother to correct the older Jounin; he _always_ knew how Kojimaru was going to react before he reacted regardless of what was happening. He didn't always understand why Kojimaru reacted the way he did and there were times when he hadn't quite known how to deal with what he knew would happen but he _always_ knew. There were times when Tenzou thought he knew his brother far better than he [Tenzou] knew himself. Of course, Kojimaru could read Tenzou just as easily, though it had taken the slightly older boy far longer to learn how to get an accurate read on him.

Tenzou often suspected that the reason he was able to read Kojimaru so easily was due to his status as a chakra sensor combined with the blood he shared with Kojimaru. It wasn't something he dwelled on often though; since it really didn't matter why he could read his brother so long as that never changed. It was bad enough that the ability had a limited range with the effectiveness decreasing as the distance between them increased but the possibility that he might one day lose that ability entirely frightened him.

He also didn't like the fact that Kojimaru could close that connection they shared. The shock of his brother shutting himself off completely in the wake of the failed team bonding exercise Kakashi had arranged had been startling and disorienting and it had terrified him. It was a feeling Tenzou prayed he never again had to feel. The only reason why he hadn't punched Kojimaru in the face for that stunt was because he hadn't actually done it on purpose. Well, that and the fact that while it had terrified Tenzou, the brief period of complete separation had nearly killed Kojimaru – figuratively speaking.

Kojimaru didn't handle separation (regardless of whether it was physical, mental, or emotional) very well.

That wasn't to say that he couldn't handle spending time apart from Tenzou, he could; so long as he knew that the separation wouldn't last for more than twelve hours and that he'd not be too far away if he ever needed him. An example would be Kojimaru's easy acceptance of the fact that they both lived in different homes. Sure, they'd spent many a night at each other's house and later at Shikaku's, Aoba's, and Hayama-sensei's houses but there were just as many nights that they'd spent apart as well. That was especially true when they went long stretches of time away from their respective guardians.

Tenzou was drawn out of his silent musings when Kasai ordered him to get back to practicing the new seal that Jiraiya had designed to replace the original disguise seal that Kojimaru had worn. A small smile curled the corners of his lips up as he fondly recalled the long hours he and his brother had put into learning how to draw the original seals. Sure, the endless practice had been an annoying pain at the time but they'd still had fun sneaking around so they could practice together when they technically weren't supposed to.

After he'd drawn the seal another dozen less than perfect times, Tenzou paused a moment to massage his aching wrist while he casually glanced upwards to check on Kojimaru. At the moment, his brother was stuck to the ceiling carefully testing the integrity of the support beams in between filling the scattered holes that had been left behind by his ice in with his Mokuton. He didn't even need the connection they shared to know that his brother still felt ashamed over his loss of control; he could easily see it in the way his brother had curled so tightly in on himself to make himself as small as possible and in the tautness of his muscles as he stiffly crept across the ceiling as he worked.

Dropping his eyes back down to the seal on Kasai's desk, Tenzou scowled beneath his mask and silently began plotting an appropriate retaliatory prank to hit Jiraiya with for purposefully setting his brother up like he had. He briefly toyed with the idea of including the rest of the adults present before he decided that they hadn't yet earned a proper pranking. He could always adjust his plans later if Kojimaru disagreed with his assessment.

"That will do," Kasai announced a half an hour later after he'd spent several minutes inspecting the most recent copy of the seal that Tenzou had drawn. "Go smooth out the attempts Tora made to fix his mess so that my office looks less like a disaster area while you rest your wrist to prevent it from cramping up on you when you apply the seal."

Tenzou complied with the gruff order while he discreetly kept an eye on his brother when he saw Inoichi pull Kojimaru off to one side to speak with him. He knew he didn't have to worry about the blond setting off Kojimaru's temper (the Yamanaka knew most of Kojimaru's triggers and knew how to work around them). That didn't stop him from worrying about Kojimaru's current state of mind since his brother's emotions still felt rather volatile; the unnatural chill lingering in the air a big clue. Then again, Kojimaru's emotions had been all over the place for the past few weeks.

He just hadn't lost complete control of himself the other times like he had after the specialized suppression seal had been removed.

By the time Tenzou had finished smoothing out the last of the damage, Inoichi had finished with Kojimaru and his brother was once again seated in the chair parked in the middle of the room. The younger teen was pleased to note that Kojimaru's emotions felt a little more settled and less likely to explode after his talk with the interrogation specialist. His brother even managed to give him a wane smile when their eyes briefly met just before Tenzou dropped down off the ceiling.

"Enough lollygagging, I want you out of here in ten minutes tops; it's well past lunch time and I am tired of looking at your faces," Kasai barked the moment Tenzou's feet touched the floor.

As Tenzou collected everything he'd need to apply the seal, he rolled his eyes in response to his boss's grouchiness; the man was no where near as intimidating as he pretended to be. Not that Tenzou would ever dare to say that to Kasai's face; he wasn't stupid. Kasai might be more of a mother hen than a mother bear (unlike his predecessor) but that didn't mean he couldn't wipe the floor with him or his brother without breaking a sweat. Hell, the man could probably wipe the floor with Jiraiya if the pervert annoyed him enough.

Kojimaru let out a soft snort of amusement as their eyes met the moment Tenzou dropped down onto the stool that his brother had grown for him due to his hands being full. The two of them shared a brief smirk (though Kojimaru's was far small than normal) before Tenzou settled in to start drawing the new seal on Kojimaru's forehead. It would take him roughly eight minutes to transcribe the new seal onto his brother's face and it only took that long because his brother's current temperature was lower than normal (due to his current less-than-perfect state of mind) and the ink tended to freeze the moment it came into contact with his skin as a result.

Jiraiya then took two minutes to inspect the newly drawn seal to insure that it had been drawn correctly before he announced, "It looks accurate; why don't you go ahead and activate it so we can confirm there are no alternations in his usual disguise."

"Hai," Tenzou replied as he lifted his hand towards Kojimaru's face only to freeze when Kojimaru leaned away from him and flicked his eyes in the masked Kakashi's direction.

Ah, he should have known that his brother wasn't ready to show their captain what he considered his 'real' face yet. It would probably take years before Kojimaru even considered allowing Kakashi to learn who he was outside of the Corps; if ever. Kojimaru had been fiercely protective of his godfather ever since the man had been seriously injured during the Kyuubi's attack and the green-eyed teen greatly feared someone trying to use Kosuke to get to him. Tenzou didn't think their new captain would do such a thing nor did he think Kosuke would allow it but Kojimaru was stubbornly paranoid.

"What's the hold up, gaki?" Kasai demanded after another minute had passed.

"Inu-teichou is watching," Tenzou explained since he knew Kojimaru wasn't in the mood to talk. Tenzou then used his Mokuton to create a wooden screen that shielded Kojimaru from their captain's view before he reached for his brother's face once more. "Tora isn't quite ready to put himself on display."

A small burst of chakra later and Kojimaru's hair bled from black to blood red while his deep green eyes morphed into sapphire blue. Kojimaru reached up to scrub at his scalp for a moment and Tenzou was surprised when he felt a burst of uneasiness fill his brother as he fisted his hands in his hair; his brother had not minded the color in the past.

"Drop your hands and sit up properly so I can get a good look and you and make certain there weren't any flaws in the redesigned seal," Jiraiya ordered as he stepped back up beside the chair.

Kojimaru flinched in response to the order and Tenzou got the impression that his brother's thoughts had been a million miles away. Pursing his lips beneath his mask, Tenzou wondered what exactly it was that was bothering Kojimaru since he hadn't been able to 'see' anything but a wash of red in combination with the feelings he could sense radiating from him. He knew Kojimaru wasn't thinking about blood again this time though, because it lacked the coppery overtones that always accompanied the impressions of blood he saw… or rather sensed from his brother.

"Well, I don't see any differences," Jiraiya mused as he reached out to snag hold of Kojimaru's chin so he could turn his face from side to side to further study the changes. "Go ahead and flare your chakra for me so that I can test the chakra masking aspect of the seal." Two second later, Jiraiya yelped when Kojimaru took the opportunity the request provided to hit the man in the face with a ball of loosely packed ice crystals. "Ahhhh! Cold! What the hell was that for, gaki!?"

"You know full well that Tora dislikes being held; the body temperature difference is irritating and uncomfortable for him," Tenzou pointed out as he tried not to laugh in response to the smug amusement he could now feel radiating from his brother. "He'd be happy to use splinters next time; if you'd prefer?"

"That won't be necessary," Jiraiya dryly retorted as wiped his face off and brushed the melting ice crystals from his clothes.

"Are you done yet?" Kasai demanded from his desk.

"Aa; everything's working as it is meant to."

"Good, now get the hell out! Oh, and Tora; you are not to step outside of the village for any reason until you get a firm grip on your temper – I don't need the headache of dealing with the mess you are bound to create the moment someone says something that sets you off. I'll leave it to your usual minders to police you while you're out amongst the civilians."

"Does that include visiting our summoning clans for further training?" Tenzou inquired as he recalled Kojimaru's earlier promise to meet with the younger otter warriors he fought and trained alongside.

"No, any messes you make there will not affect me or my usual paperwork; so feel free to terrorize them all you want."

Tenzou snickered in response to Kasai's blanket permission to prank their summonses as he silently released Kojimaru's disguise so they could leave. They both hurried to get rid of the furniture they'd grown before they headed towards the door in unison after Kojimaru fished his mask out of his utility pouch so he could put it back on. They'd barely stepped through the door before Kakashi was suddenly there between them with his arms slung over both of their shoulders.

"I know we've been given the next two weeks off but I would like for all four of us to get together once or twice to do some team training now that everyone is off medical leave and we don't have any missions scheduled," Kakashi declared as he steered them towards the stairs leading down to the barracks.

Tenzou glanced around Kakashi to meet Kojimaru's gaze for a moment before he answered for both of them, "Will the last two days of our vacation work for you or did you want to meet once a week?"

"The last two days will be fine," Kakashi replied as he jerked his arm away from Kojimaru (a sure sign that his brother had grown irritated with the continued contact and jabbed him with a splinter or ten). "I'll book the Gauntlet for both days providing Yagi-teichou doesn't have it tied up for the next month or so in order to put your little stray through her paces."

"I'd love to watch her run through the full course at least once just to see how she handles the Gauntlet except that Yagi-teichou would likely see that as a request for remedial lessons," Tenzou flippantly quipped and Kakashi let out a snort of amusement even as he nodded his head in agreement and Tenzou wondered if the older teen's reaction meant that he had been trained by Yagi when he first joined the Corps.

They reached the stairs at that point and Kakashi dropped his arm off of Tenzou's shoulder and stopped walking as he announced, "I'll see the both of you outside of the Gauntlet bright and early on the fifth; I'll drop you a note if we end up pushed out into one of the smaller group training rooms due to a lack of availability."

The older teen then sauntered off back in the direction of Kasai's office without another word. Tenzou stared after him until he disappeared before he swung his gaze to eye Kojimaru for a moment. After determining that his brother needed a little cheering up, Tenzou snagged hold of Kojimaru's wrist and dragged him into the nearest wall so they could bypass the stairs. They would reemerge a few minutes later on the lowest level of the facility and Tenzou dragged Kojimaru to his room where he had a pot of hot water (which he knew he'd have to reheat) and Kojimaru's favorite tea blend waiting.

Two minutes later, the two of them were seated side by side with their shoulders pressed together at the low table in the middle of the room while they waited for the tea to steep. Silence permeated the room but that was not all that unusual an occurrence when hanging out with Kojimaru. Tenzou didn't really mind the silence; he'd grown used to it over the years. What he did mind was the fact that his brother was obviously still feeling so out of sorts even if he was somewhat calm at the moment.

"They gave her red hair like mine," Kojimaru announced several minutes later as he reached out to absently play with the cup of tea that Tenzou had just placed in front of him.

"Does she have blue eyes as well?"

"No, they're a dark brown with flecks of gray."

"Is there something wrong with her having red hair?"

Tenzou swore he felt his brother flinch in response to the question before he hoarsely stated, "It makes her look like my mother. Only her eyes are all wrong. It was… jarring. I thought they'd just give her brown hair like I'd been doing since we brought her home with us."

"The seal was based off of ours and since mine is blond and too close to her natural hair color, they probably chose to go with red instead of trying to design a complete new one," Tenzou offered up as a reason why they'd chosen to give the girl red hair. "That or Jiraiya just thought that giving her red hair would be funny because you were basically the one that she followed home."

"Probably," Kojimaru agreed with a slight frown as he twirled his untouched cup of tea in circles.

"Do you know what she chose for her new name?" Tenzou fished in an effort to change the topic and he was a bit surprised when Kojimaru flinched sharply and spilled his tea in response to the question. "Kojimaru…?"

"She asked me to give her a new name."

"Did she not like the name you picked? Or did she get mad at you and kick you again because you teased her with a bunch of silly names just to annoy her?"

"No."

"So, what's her new name?"

"Yuri."

"That's a nice, easy name to remember. Did you pick that one because it started with the same letters as her old name?"

"It was my mother's name."

Tenzou blinked in surprise over that admission before he twisted sideways so he could study his brother's profile. He hadn't known Kojimaru had known his mother's name. He also didn't know what to think of the fact that Kojimaru had chosen to gift his little stray with something so precious; the green-eyed teen had precious few memories of his parents, after all, and he wasn't really one to share them with just anyone.

"Are you okay with her taking your mother's name?"

"I don't know," Kojimaru replied with a shrug of his shoulder before he scooped his cup off of the table and took a small sip of the now lukewarm tea that he savored for several seconds. Once he swallowed that bit of tea, he added, "It feels weird to think of her as 'Yuri' but at the same time, I can't imagine calling her anything else. Not after seeing her with red hair like that."

"So, do you still think she's cute?" Tenzou lightly teased in an effort to draw Kojimaru out of his funk.

"She's certainly cuter than you," Kojimaru snorted as he playfully bumped shoulders with Tenzou.

"Does that mean that she's twice as cute as you?" Tenzou crowed in return.

"Well, she is a girl," Kojimaru dryly pointed out.

"True, but I'm not the one running around calling her cute all of the time."

"Are you telling me you don't think she's cute?"

Tenzou opened his mouth to answer only to snap it shut a moment later when he realized he wasn't quite certain how to answer that question. He'd not really paid any attention to the girls they knew. He certainly hadn't tried to fit them into groups based upon their looks. And he didn't quite know what made one girl cute and another plain or pretty.

"I don't know," Tenzou replied after a moment. "What is it that makes you think she's so cute?"

"She reminds me of a standoffish kitten facing off against a playful dog," Kojimaru offered after taking a long moment to think about. "And she's got the cutest little button nose."

"You think her nose is cute?" Tenzou repeated in disbelief.

Kojimaru just shrugged his shoulder in reply as his cheeks turned peek with embarrassment. Tenzou was completely and utterly baffled; how the hell could a 'nose', of all things, be cute? He'd expected that Yugito's… or rather, Yuri's feisty attitude amused his brother (he'd sensed his brother's amusement more than once when they were in her presence) but the whole nose thing had caught him off guard.

"Whatever," Tenzou finally muttered as he put his brother's latest strangeness out of his mind. "Are you going to spend a few days with your godfather before you slip off to visit the otters?"

"No, Inoichi wants me to bunk at his house for the next three or four nights."

"Did he say why?"

"Intensive counseling and observation," Kojimaru answered as he wrinkled his nose in distaste and Tenzou couldn't help but wince in sympathy; Inoichi's approach to counseling usually involved all but forcing a person to face their worst memories or fears. "He's going to re-test all of my triggers to see which ones were affected by the removal of the stupid mind altering seal that I didn't know was there. He'll probably make me do a bunch of anger management workshops too."

"Are you going to be okay with that?"

"I don't have a choice, Tenzou; if I can't control the 'mood swings' by the time our vacation is up, then Kasai is going to yank me from the squad."

"He said that…?" Tenzou demanded in shock.

"Yes."

"If he takes you off the squad, I'll quit."

"Don't be an idiot, Tenzou; I'm not going to let myself get pulled," Kojimaru countered as he smashed a snowball in Tenzou's face without warning.

Tenzou retaliated with a blob of gooey mud that he formed from water and dust he pulled from the air. Kojimaru's laughter was music to his ears as the two of them wrestled on the floor taking turns smashing snow, mud, and water into each other's faces. Even better was the fact that the last vestiges of Kojimaru's earlier anger, frustration, guilt, and shame had vanished completely. They would play around for another twenty minutes before they mutually decided they'd played around long enough and broke apart to sprawl out on the floor while they caught their breath.

Well, while he caught his breath; Kojimaru wasn't even winded from their short, friendly scuffle.

Once his breathing evened out, Tenzou sat up and began cleaning up the mud he'd thrown about by separating the dirt from the water and tossing the dirt into the trash can. Kojimaru sluggishly moved to help him a moment later; the green eyed teen drawing the water from the floor and re-freezing it before tossing the resulting snowballs into the shower so the water could trickle down the drain as they melted. Once the last trace of their little elemental horseplay had been dealt with, they straightened up the furniture that had been disturbed from its proper place.

Tenzou then watched and felt his brother's good mood fade fairly quickly. Unwilling to let him sink too deeply into his negative emotions, Tenzou lightly punched him on the shoulder and asked, "What time is Inoichi expecting you to show up at his place tonight?"

"He's not; he ordered me to meet him at my house at five sharp because he wants to talk to ojisan before he drags me to his house for my first session."

"In that case; want to help me prank Ibiki into giving Aoba some time off later this week so he can hang out with us?"

"There's a rumor going round the market that the Uchiha District is overflowing with stray cats again," Kojimaru offered as his mood did an abrupt one-eighty.

"Do you still have some of the fish oil that Kawanari gave you to oil your knives?"

"Aa, I have a small cask of it sealed away in my locker. What were you thinking?"

"Decoy lures to bring the cats to us so the Uchiha on patrol don't get their noses bent out of shape for us sneaking into their district without permission. If you coat some of your little life-like Mokuton Puppets with the oil and have then run through the streets, then the cats they run across should chase after them. Then we can crate them up and sneak them into Ibiki's office."

"We'll need to buy fresh fish from the market to keep the cats from making a racket while we transport them," Kojimaru suggested as he automatically began growing several wooden mice that he covered with his Mokuton: Kamen no Jutsu to make them look more realistic. Seeing that his brother was firmly occupied with his task, Tenzou climbed to his feet so he could fetch the fish oil from Kojimaru's room. He'd barely opened the door before Kojimaru called out, "The oil is in the green bordered scroll labeled 'from Fish-Face' under the extra blankets at the bottom of my locker."

"Got it! Be back in a sec."

By the time he'd unearthed the scroll containing the fish oil, Kojimaru had a veritable army of two inch gray mice sitting on the table. If Tenzou hadn't known the rodents were nothing but wooden puppets, he would have thought his room had been invaded by a dozen colonies of actual mice; the creations were that realistic. That was just one of those aspects of Kojimaru's corrupted Mokuton that Tenzou envied and admired. He would love to produce living puppets that could act independently of him (limited though the ability was).

"Can you grow a bowl to hold enough oil for me to submerge each mouse completely so I can coat their fur?" Kojimaru asked as he reached for the scroll in Tenzou's hand.

"Yeah; anything else you need?"

"A towel to keep the oil from getting all over the floor and your blow-drier; they'll need to be properly dried so the scent can't be washed off or easily tracked back to us because they dripped all over the place."

It took them roughly an hour to prep all sixty mice and clean up the mess left behind. The mice were then gathered up into a small wooden box that Tenzou grew so they would be both easy to transport and unlikely to be seen as they traveled through the village. As soon as the last mouse had been boxed up, they activated their disguise seals and changed into the standard shinobi uniform before Kojimaru tossed another disguise overtop of their every-day faces so they could avoid being recognized. The two of them then left the ANBU Facility and headed straight for the market place to pick up several pounds of cheap fish.

Once they had the fish in hand, the headed for the Uchiha District to release the lure mice. Tenzou took charge of monitoring the mice as they scurried over the wall that surrounded the large estate that the Uchiha Clan lived on while Kojimaru created half a dozen life-like cats that would round up any of the lure mice that were caught or destroyed by any of the Uchiha that noticed them. It wouldn't due to leave any evidence of their prank behind, after all. As soon as both the mice and the cats were gone, the two boys slipped into the nearest tree and dropped their extra disguise.

They would resurface half a mile away from the T and I Facility and apply a new disguise while they waited for the lures to bring the cats to them. Eighteen minutes later, when the first mouse turned up with three bedraggled cats chasing it, Tenzou grew a large crate before he began deboning the fish they'd purchased. The stray cats quickly abandoned the mouse lure in favor of cozying up to Kojimaru once they were close enough to sense him. His brother automatically showered each cat with affection before he transferred it into the crate where they eagerly fell upon the bite sized pieces of raw fish Tenzou had tossed inside.

By the time the last mouse lure and all six disguised ice cats turned up, the two boys had close to forty purring cats in the crate. There'd been close to three times that many cats that had shown up but they'd not bothered to collect those cats that were in obvious good health or that wore collars (two signs that indicated said cats were somebody's pets) and those that were obviously nursing were turned loose so they could return to their litters. They also wouldn't be using those cats with obvious health problems; those animals had been crated up separately and they would be delivering them to the Inuzuka Vet for treatment or in a few cases to be euthanized by a couple of clones.

The cats that would be part of their prank would also end up at the vet for health checks once the prank was over and then they would be put up for adoption to keep them off of the street.

As soon as Kojimaru finished dealing with the lures and his clean up crew, the two boys split up; Tenzou to provide the distraction to get Ibiki out of his office and Kojimaru to smuggle the crate of cats into said office. Getting into the building unnoticed was as simple as merging into the wooden eaves beneath the roof. Once inside, it was child's play for Tenzou to locate Ibiki's chakra signature. Drawing the man out of his office was a little trickier but not impossible thanks to Tenzou's familiarity with the man and his knowledge of how things worked in the T and I Department.

Another quick henge (to make it look like he was wearing the T and I Dept.'s gray uniform), a bit of superficial wood damage to one of the empty holding cell doors, and a co-opted department go-for soon saw the rumor that holding cells had structural damage being carried directly to Ibiki. As soon as the rumor reached Ibiki, the intimidating Tokubetsu Jounin stalked out of his office and made his way down to the holding cells in order to inspect them personally; as procedure demanded.

The moment Tenzou confirmed he had taken the bait, he hurried through the walls to Ibiki's office to help his brother finish setting things up. He arrived to find Kojimaru sealing away the last of Ibiki's paperwork (in order to prevent said paperwork from being damaged or lost due to their prank) into a storage scroll that was promptly dropped into Ibiki's desk for safe keeping. The paperwork that had been occupying the desk was then replaced with defunct test sheets from the Academy that the two boys had liberated years ago and never got around to pranking their instructors with.

The last of the fish they'd purchased was then scattered about the floor of the office and all forty cats were carefully helped out of their temporary carrier. As soon as the last cat was out, Tenzou reabsorbed the crate while Kojimaru settled the cats down and broke up a couple of fights that had broken out over the fish. The two of them then settled themselves into Ibiki's desk so that they would have front row seats for the moment when Ibiki discovered the prank.

Tenzou mentally patted himself on the back as he sensed nothing but anticipation and amusement from his brother through the bond they shared. He knew his distraction hadn't really solved anything but it at least kept Kojimaru from dwelling on things. Getting a chance to tweak Ibiki's nose with a creative prank that could be played off as a security check and potentially get to spend some time with their old teammate was just a bonus.

* * *

**Translations:** Japanese to English

Gaki – brat  
Kawanari – one-eyed otter; kawauso (river otter) + kaminari (thunder)  
Mokuton: Kamen no Jutsu – Wood Disguise Technique  
Oi – Hey  
Ojisan – uncle

* * *

**AN:** _Just a couple of quick notes here; first, the insights into how Tenzou senses emotions and 'thoughts' from Kojimaru/Harry is something I should have used sooner but I didn't realize I never explained that in the story until I went through and did all of the edits/revisions. I could have gone back and put it into the story in a more appropriate place but then that would have meant not only rewriting huge sections but also making everyone go back and reread whatever chapter(s) said information was inserted to. _

_So, instead of doing that, I put it in here. There will also be more in depth explanations later on in the story as to exactly why Tenzou senses what he does; though there were hints in this chapter if you paid attention.  
_

_Anywho, moving on, the next few chapters will deal with the rest of the aftermath of Kojimaru having the one seal removed and how he and others deal with the repercussions of that. There are also a few others things I finally reveal about the bond that Tenzou &amp; Kojimaru share in the next few chapters as well as some insights into how I see some of Konoha's clans and their abilities/purposes. Oh, and yes, Ibiki's reaction to the cat prank will be shown. *snickers*_

_Lastly, chapters 15-28 were updated with their revised versions today and the last handful of old chapters will be updated tomorrow when I post chapter 34. ~ Jenn_


	34. The Headache

**Disclaimer:** _All HP characters are the property of JKR, the WB, and respective publishing companies and all Naruto characters are the property of Masashi Kishimoto. This is nothing more than a simple FanFiction that I have written. I have made no money from this or any of the other stories I have posted on this or other sites._

**Warnings:** _Mild to moderate violence, character death, alternate universe (i.e. kiss canon goodbye), OCC behaviors and personalities, a number of original characters and obscure canon characters to flesh out family trees, random chosen last names to give a number of characters surnames, and who knows what else._

**AN:** _This story is self-beta'd; so there may be occasional grammatical or spelling errors that crop up every now and then and for those I apologize in advance._

* * *

Chapter Thirty-Four: The Headache

_October 23, 0295 AtD, 4:28 PM  
Konohagakure no Sato, Hi no Kuni_

Twenty-five year old Morino Ibiki scowled irritably as he made his way back to his office. He'd just spent the last hour inspecting the holding cells and while the cell door that had been singled out in the initial report had only sustained superficial damage, a couple of the occupied cells (and a few of the other empty ones) had turned out to have significant structural damage that would have allowed said occupants to escape in time. Worse yet, the damage was intentional; meaning that someone had purposefully been chipping away at the security in _his_ domain.

And that pissed him off.

He also needed to find out which of his underlings was _supposed_ to perform the monthly inspections on all of the cells so he could skin the fool for missing the artificially rusted hinges (he could practically taste the chakra from the technique used), termite damage (in a building layered with seals that repelled all damn insects – the Aburame assigned to his department hated those seals), and mildew rot caused by standing water that didn't come from a leak). The damage had not yet reached the point where the integrity of the cell doors had been completely shot but the damage was significant enough that it had been there for _months_.

That meant that the one responsible for catching that kind of damage had either slacked off on his/her duties or he/she was the responsible for the damage in the first place.

Heads were going to roll if he unearthed even a single traitor amongst those that answered to him. In the mean time, he had equipment and supplies to order so that all of the damage could be repaired or replaced. He'd also need to find someone trustworthy to supervise a building wide inspection to search for additional sabotage in case it wasn't just the holding cells that they had targeted. The other thing he'd need to do was pull in a few extra Yamanaka and two squads of ANBU in to screen each and every person that had worked in the building at any point in the last six months; including the part-timers and temps.

_Maybe I can convince Kasai to loan me the annoying troublemakers that used to follow Aoba around like starving kittens chasing after their mother,_ Ibiki thought to himself as he strode up to his office door. _Those two brats were damned good at laying traps and catching their targets and it was more than a little galling to know that I lost them to Kasai at the end of their two-year training stint without even the ghost of a chance to entice them to stay here with me._

Nodding to himself, Ibiki opened his office door and then abruptly slammed the door shut after catching a brief glimpse inside of the room. Closing his eyes, Ibiki slowly counted to ten to keep from loosing complete control of his already frayed temper. Once he reached ten, he opened the door a second time and held it open for five full seconds in order to get a good look at his office before he shut the door again. Ibiki reached up to pinch the bridge of his nose as he tried to make sense of what he'd just seen.

A third scan of his office coupled with the standard genjutsu release revealed that the scene inside of the room hadn't changed much in the last fifteen seconds.

His office was filled with cats.

There were dozens of scruffy felines in a variety of shades and breeds infesting his office.

Ibiki rubbed his hand back and forth over his mouth a couple of times before his hand snapped out, snagged hold of a passing minion, and dragged the unfortunate Chuunin into his personal space as he ordered, "Fetch Kotetsu and Izumo; _now!_"

"Ano… those two are on guard duty at the main gate today, I…Ibiki-san," the Chuunin stuttered out in a flustered tone.

"Gate duty…?" Ibiki repeated as he scowled at his office door. "Then who the hell…?" A growl escaped Ibiki as his thoughts immediately returned to another pair of consummate pranksters that he'd just been thinking about not more than two minutes ago. "Never mind, I know who; go find Aoba and tell him to get his ass here ten minutes ago!"

"Hai!" the Chuunin hastily agreed before he scampered off like a wet cat with its tail on fire.

Ibiki ignored him as he glared at his door while his mind replayed the memory of his office being taken over by a bunch of furballs. His glare intensified when his head began to throb with the first faint tendrils of a migraine as it occurred to him that the snap inspection of the holding cells might have been instigated for the sole purpose of getting him out of his office so the prank could be set up. If he learned that those two runts were responsible for the damaged doors to the occupied cells, he was going to skin them alive and throw them in a tank with a school of starving piranha.

"You sent for me, sir?" Aoba calmly inquired as he strolled up to Ibiki's office in an unhurried jog.

Ibiki reached out to snag hold of the teen with one hand and opened the door with the other before he propelled the younger Tokubetsu Jounin into his office and demanded, "Explain! Now!"

"Ano… your office seems to have a picked up a slight cat infestation, Ibiki-san."

"I am aware of that," Ibiki bit out as he snapped the door shut behind him to prevent the infestation of fuzzy menaces from spreading to the rest of his building. "I want to know why they are in my office."

"Er, I don't know. I spent all afternoon logging the mission reports from the past two days like you asked me to."

"Cut the bullshit, Yamashiro; I already know your old teammates were the ones responsible for this mess."

"Why would Kojimaru and Tenzou go through the trouble of pranking you? Did you try to have one of them reassigned to this Department? Because you know they don't like it when people try to separate them."

"Someone sabotaged several of the occupied holding cells and sent a Chuunin with a report of a damaged door on an unoccupied cell," Ibiki icily informed his subordinate. "The door on the unoccupied cell was a red herring and if not for the fact that I am required to inspect all cells in the event that structural damage is found any where in the building, I would not have discovered that the integrity of the occupied cells had been compromised. And Amaterasu help me, if I find out that those two idiots had any hand in doctoring those doors, then I will permanently separate them; into pieces!"

"We'd never screw with the village's security," a voice declared as the two pranksters in question emerged from Ibiki's desk and Ibiki didn't know if he wanted to applaud their audacity for hiding in plain sight where they could watch their prank play out or strangle them for it. "I will admit to doing a little cosmetic damage to the door of the unoccupied cell but I know better than to mess with the occupied cells or to do actual damage to any of the doors down there."

"And the mess in my office!?" Ibiki demanded as he glowered at the artificial blond while he ignored the swarm of cats that had converged on the red-headed troublemaker the moment he had appeared.

"An appeal for you to give Aoba some time off," Tenzou shamelessly admitted. The teen then shifted minutely so that his body blocked his hands from his preoccupied brother before he signed, '_And I needed to distract Kojimaru from his downward spiral before he lost control a second time._'

Ibiki mentally took a step back as he digested that silent little tidbit. He was well aware of the current issues the shorter teen was having with his self-control because of the complications the kid was experiencing with the onset of puberty due to the experiments that had been performed on him as a child. Inoichi had requested the next four days off to deal with the problem just a few hours earlier but he'd briefly forgotten about that in the face of the sabotaged holding cells and the unexpected prank. Knowing that, he could forgive the gaki their prank but he was still pissed about the mess and the sabotaged cells.

Speaking of messes, Ibiki eyed the shredded remains of the various documents he'd been reviewing prior to his trip down to the basement for the impromptu inspection and barked, "My paperwork?"

"Is safe, sound, and securely stored away in your desk where it wouldn't be lost or damaged," Tenzou stated with a grin as he flicked a hand out and gestured at the shredded messes on the floor. "Unfortunately, the same can't be said for the outdated Academy test sheets we unearthed a few years back."

"Why in the hell did you have to choose cats for your prank?" Ibiki asked as he felt a bit of tension fade in light of the news that his paperwork had not been harmed. Not that he'd mind seeing the hellish stack of reports, requisitions, and transcripts being shredded; he just didn't want to deal with the headache the lost paperwork would have generated on top of the serious repairs that needed to be made to the holding cells.

"The Uchiha District was overcrowded with strays."

"I see."

And he did. He knew Kojimaru had a soft spot for animals and children. It was also readily apparent that the cats in his office were homeless and barely surviving; taking them off the streets would save their lives and reduce the likelihood that there'd be an outbreak of diseases spreading throughout the village's pet population. He also wasn't surprised that the two teens had disguised the true nature of their humanitarian act by using the critters they were saving in a harmless prank. Ibiki was not as impressed with the fact that they'd chosen him as the target of said prank though.

"I will grant Aoba two days off but in exchange I want the two of you to make arrangements with Kasai to have your squad and another assigned to my department for the next two weeks while I clean up the unexpected extra mess that you dropped in my lap with your prank."

"No can do; we're on mandatory vacation for the next two weeks," Tenzou countered with a shake of his head. "I can still take your request to Kasai for you so he knows that you need a couple of squads to lend a hand in the house cleaning though."

"Why are you being forced to take an extended vacation?" Aoba inquired as he waded through the pile of cats still crowding around the suspiciously silent Kojimaru in order to save Ibiki's leather chair from an industrious calico kitten that had been looking to climb up onto the desk by way of said chair.

"We've basically been running sensitive missions back to back since the Hyuuga Affair in August."

"Did one of those missions have anything to do with the little stray that passed through here?" Ibiki fished as he strode over and snagged the overly curious kitten off of his desk by the scruff of the neck after Aoba had plopped it onto the furniture; that was his favorite pen the little vermin was trying to chew on. The annoying little fuzzball immediately began purring as it twisted around in his hand to latch onto Ibiki's hand with its forepaws and began gnawing on the pad of his thumb with its needle sharp milk-teeth. Ibiki scowled at the colorful ball of fluff as he tried to decide if he thought it was cute or annoying.

Tenzou eyed the captive kitten in his hand before he smirked up at Ibiki as he drawled, "You're going to have to be a little more specific, Ibiki-san; as it appears you've had several dozen strays pass through here recently."

Ibiki shot the punk an unimpressed look for the smart-assed answer but the snot-nosed gaki didn't even have the decency to look nervous. How depressing. The more annoying members of Team Kage were no longer intimidated by him. His gaze then slid passed Tenzou to land on Kojimaru and Ibiki nearly bit his tongue when he found a pair of cold, deep blue eyes glaring at him. Instead, he merely arched an eyebrow at the irritated teen as he tried to figure out what he might have done to upset the gaki in the last five seconds.

Kojimaru's eyes slid sideways to the furball still captured in his hand before returning to his face and Ibiki was half certain that he'd be dead if the kid's looks could kill. It was at that point that he realized that Kojimaru was concerned about the scruffy kitten in his hand. Letting out a snort of amusement at the protectiveness the gaki was displaying for what was basically an unwanted pet; Ibiki deliberately tucked the kitten into the pocket of his trench coat. Kojimaru pursed his lips and eyed Ibiki a moment longer before he dropped his attention back to the cats crowding his lap; the kid apparently no longer deemed him a threat to the bedraggled kitten in his pocket.

The scarred Head of Konoha's Torture and Interrogation Department eyed the silent teen for several more second before he frowned as he realized that the teen hadn't said a single word since he appeared. He knew the gaki often went long stretches of time without speaking but it was highly unusual for him not to at least greet his former teammate. He was well aware just how close those three boys were. Then again, he might have missed it if Kojimaru had silently greeted the older teen while Ibiki had been interrogating Tenzou.

"So, about those two days off…?" Tenzou prompted; the teen's voice breaking into Ibiki's internal musings and drawing his attention back to the present.

"You said the two of you had the next two weeks off? Do you have any plans for your time off yet?" Ibiki asked as he thought of another way for the two brats to help him test and improve the security in his Department.

"Kojimaru's going to be busy with Inoichi for the next few days, we were planning to spend at least a couple of days with our summonses since we have visited them in a while, and our teichou has already claimed the last two days of our vacation for team training. We'd also hoped to have at least two days to hang out with friends and family but other than that we've got no solid plans. Why?"

"I want two days of your time in exchange for me allowing one of my more dependable underlings to take two days off."

"Doing what?"

"I want the two of you to find the holes in my security so that I can seal them before a potential spy or traitor takes advantage of them."

Ibiki saw a brief flicker of surprise flit across Tenzou's face before the teen turned to hold a silent conversation with his unspeaking co-conspirator. Kojimaru simply shrugged and Ibiki took that as the kid not minding. Both fifteen year olds then glanced at his subordinate and Aoba tipped his head to the side before he nodded once.

"Will you allow Aoba to help us?" Tenzou inquired as all three boys swung their attention back to Ibiki.

"So long as his involvement is not advertised to the rest of the staff, I have no issue with you commandeering an insider to help you test my security," Ibiki readily agreed since the three of them together made for a very efficient team.

"Is it alright to let Inoichi know what is going on? Or will you keep him in the dark as well?"

"You are free to tell Inoichi whatever you want; he's one of the few individuals attached to my Department that I know is trustworthy."

"Perfect, we'll give you the twenty-seventh and the fourth."

"That is acceptable," Ibiki replied as he strode around his desk to dig out his calendar; he was rather impressed that the teen had offered to break the days up to allow him time to fix the holes they uncovered the first time before they came back to retest the security a second time. "You can kidnap Aoba at the end of the day on the twenty-seventh and keep him until the twenty-ninth; I'll expect him to be back on duty the first thing on the morning of the thirtieth."

"Did you still want us to deliver a message to Kasai for you?"

"No, I'll speak to him myself tonight."

"We'll let you get back to work then," Tenzou burbled as he climbed to his feet and Ibiki leaned over the desk to snag hold of the teen by the back of his flak jacket before he could take a single step towards the door.

"Not so fast, gaki; you and your partner in crime there have a mess to clean up."

"We were already planning to take the cats with us, Ibiki-san; they'll need to be seen by the Inuzuka before they can be put up for adoption."

"You will also take the trash you hauled into my office and if I find so much as a single scrap of paper left behind, then I will skin you alive before I boil you in oil."

A snort sounded from the floor where Kojimaru was still seated in front of the desk and Ibiki nearly winced when he realized that his threat had not been taken seriously. That or his threat had not been suitably threatening. He liked it much better when those two had twitched and jumped at shadows when in his presence and showed him a healthy balance between respect and fear. Ibiki suspected that they'd either become desensitized to his brand of sadism through constant exposure during the two years he trained them or they'd run into someone more intimidating when they joined ANBU.

Either way, he mourned the change because it meant that he couldn't simply glare them into submission any more. It also meant he was far more likely to end up as a prank target again in the future.

Deciding that it was best not to show how disappointed he was that the former members of Team Kage were no longer afraid of risking his wrath, Ibiki simply pushed the rest of the outdated Academy tests off his desk and onto Kojimaru's head and released his hold on Tenzou. All three teens were laughing at him as they set about putting his office back to rights and he purposefully ignored them as he dug into his desk for the scroll holding his paperwork so he could get back to work.

He did make a point to keep an eye on the trio though; lest the little smart-asses think to leave him a farewell prank to keep him on his toes. He pointedly ignored the small army of ice-goats that were steadily chewing their way through the paper mess on the floor; he did _not_ want to know how or why the gaki had come up with such an utterly ridiculous use for his Hyouton. He also ignored the occasional cat brushing up against his legs as they were rounded up.

"If you're finished, get out," Ibiki growled when his office had fallen silent and he'd noticed a shadow falling across his desk.

"Ano…" Tenzou began uncertainly.

"Out!"

"Demo…."

"I said out! I have work to do; unless you'd like to be stuck here for the next three hours doing my paperwork for me?"

"Er, we'll pass," Tenzou hurriedly retorted as he grabbed hold of Kojimaru and dragged him towards the door.

Ibiki glowered at them right up until the door clicked shut behind them and then he let out a sigh as he reached up to run a hand over his face. He then dug into his bottom drawer and pulled out the bottle of sake he kept there for those days when the stress of running Konoha's least appreciated Department got to him. As he poured himself a single saucer of the clear alcohol, he couldn't help but notice the bottle was almost empty. After making a mental note to pick up another bottle, he knocked the shot back before he returned his attention to the next report he needed to review.

Two hours later, as he was locking up for the night, Ibiki finally realized why Tenzou had been stalling there at the end when he reached into his coat pocket for his keys and came up with a slumbering ball of multi-colored fur instead; he'd completely forgotten about the calico kitten he'd pulled off of his desk and shoved into his pocket earlier. Ibiki briefly considered dropping the stray off at the Inuzuka's Veterinary Clinic with the rest of the feline hoard from the prank but decided against it when the creature let out a rumbling purr and snuggled deeper into his hand.

His brother had a birthday coming up soon, didn't he?

And Idate had often pestered him (and their parents) for a pet when he'd been younger, hadn't he?

His brother was also due to graduate from the Academy this year, if he recalled correctly. If his otouto was considered responsible enough to take up a hitai-ate, then he was certainly responsible enough to look after a kitten. And it wasn't like money was tight any more since he'd taken over as the Head of his Department three years ago; so they could easily afford to feed and care for a pet now. Decision made, Ibiki tucked the kitten back into his pocket and completely ignored the voice in the back of his mind that was calling him a sap for coming up with a reason to keep the fuzzball.

* * *

_October 23, 0295 AtD, 4:55 PM  
Konohagakure no Sato, Hi no Kuni_

Inoichi tried to ignore the small kernel of guilt he felt as he approached Maruboshi Kosuke's house in order to speak to the man about his ward. He really disliked being the bearer of bad news and it seemed like the only time he ever visited the older man, it was to inform him of some new issue that had cropped up with Kojimaru. That wasn't strictly true, of course, but it certainly seemed that way to the blond. Part of the reason for that impression was due to the way that everyone else always volunteered him to be the one to deliver bad news.

He wasn't certain if it was because the others feared the man or if it was because they just disliked delivering bad news in general. Inoichi personally knew he had nothing to fear from Kosuke; the man was the most even tempered shinobi he'd ever met and he exuded a perpetually calm aura. It was his calm aura that made the unflappable man the perfect guardian for the emotionally charged Kojimaru. The so-called Mannen Genin had done an admirable job raising the boy over the last dozen or so years despite the occasional hang-ups that had cropped up every now and then.

The Jounin was certain that Kosuke would also be instrumental in helping Kojimaru through his current difficulties.

That didn't stop a small part of him from feeling guilty that he was yet again coming to the man with a problem that his ward had been burdened with through no fault of his own. No, the fault for Kojimaru's current difficulties could be laid squarely at the feet of Orochimaru and the traitor's vile experiments. He supposed that a tiny sliver of the blame could also be placed on Akimichi Torifu; as the deceased ANBU Commander had failed to consider the long-term effects of placing Kojimaru under a mind-altering seal that suppressed his emotions and linked it to a specific trigger.

Inoichi already knew that Torifu had not consulted any of the Yamanaka about the long-term effects of such a seal; he'd scoured the clan archives kept beneath his father's flower shop for any references to that specific seal and questioned his father about the matter after he'd left Kasai's office.

He didn't think that that oversight had been due arrogance on Torifu's part. He knew that the man had been pressed for time and forced to limit the number of people involved in hiding Kojimaru and Tenzou from all possible threats. Nor was there any question that Torifu had known what he was doing when it came to seals; the Akimichi Clan had produced almost as many fuuinjutsu masters as the former hidden village of Uzushio. They just never advertised the fact that their clan specialized in seals (because how else would their specialized armor work so well with their clan's jutsu?).

No, Inoichi was certain that Torifu had simply overlooked the potential repercussions of suppressing Kojimaru's anger in favor of preventing said anger from drawing attention to the child he'd been trying to hide. There was a part of Inoichi that was castigating himself for not considering said repercussions himself when he'd first learned about that particular seal three years earlier. He hadn't really given the seal much thought at all though. There had been far too many other matters clamoring for his attention at the time and he'd put his faith in the assumption that the proper research had been done at the time of the seal's creation.

He would not make the same mistake again.

Pushing his introspection and self-directed irritation aside, Inoichi unlatched the gate to Kosuke's yard and strode across the thriving garden. He'd barely set foot on the first step leading up to the porch that spanned the width of the modest house when the front door opened and Kosuke stepped out of the house. The older man immediately caught sight of Inoichi and paused for a brief moment to study Inoichi before he let out a heavy sigh.

"Good afternoon, Inoichi; I take it that you are here for another one of _those_ discussions," Kosuke stated rather than asked as he prevented the front door from swinging closed behind him and Inoichi was caught off guard by the statement; he hadn't expected the man to know why he was there since he knew for a fact that Kojimaru was not home. And if the teen had been home earlier and warned the man, then Inoichi would have been expected and he clearly was not since Kosuke had obviously been on his way out. "Oh, don't look so surprised, Inoichi-kun; you always wear a rather pained expression when you come to see me while bearing less than pleasant news."

"There are times when it must seem as if that is the only kind of news I ever have when I visit you," Inoichi offered as both a confirmation that he had come bearing unpleasant news and as an apology for being the bearer of yet more bad news. "Do you have time to hear me out or should I come back later since you appear to be on your way out?"

"I have time now as I can always get my shopping done tomorrow morning instead," Kosuke replied as he gestured for Inoichi to follow him as he retreated back into the house.

The two of them ended up in Kosuke's kitchen two minutes later and Inoichi silently watched as Kosuke expertly went about preparing the two of them a pot of peppermint tea. It was a familiar ritual and Inoichi briefly wondered if it was a routine that the man had followed all of his life or if it was one that had been born in the wake of taking in a certain tea-obsessed waif twelve years ago. Kosuke had just started pouring the tea when Inoichi sensed Kojimaru's altered chakra signature pop into existence out in the yard; a sure sign that the teen had been traveling through the trees rather than traveling in a more conventional way.

Inoichi opened his mouth to inform Kosuke that his godson would be joining them only to close it when he noted that the man had already snagged a third cup. That made the blond wonder if Kosuke was a chakra sensor or potentially just chakra sensitive or if he had an alternative means of keeping track of his ward. After all, Kosuke was a formidable shinobi for all that he'd not risen above the rank of Genin and Inoichi knew the only reason why Kosuke had not been promoted to Jounin decades earlier was due to his refusal to accept such a promotion.

He just didn't know why. And no matter how curious he was about the reason, he was not about to pry into the older man's business. Not only would it be terribly rude, it would potentially antagonize the man. And the last thing he needed was to end up butting heads with Kojimaru's guardian when he needed said guardian's cooperation in order to ensure that Kojimaru remained mentally and emotionally balanced. Even if asking probing questions about his past didn't upset Kosuke, there was a fifty-fifty chance that Kojimaru would take offense to his godfather being 'interrogated'.

And Inoichi had no desire to be pranked in perpetuity by the gaki for any slight (real or imagined) against his godfather.

"Tadaima," Kojimaru quietly announced as he opened the kitchen door and stepped into the house; his arrival breaking into Inoichi's silent reflections.

"Okari, Kojimaru," Kosuke offered in return as he took his seat at the table.

"I should probably warn you that Inoichi…" Kojimaru began only to cut himself off when he finally looked around and noticed Inoichi seated at the table. "…is already here. Gomen, it would seem I'm running even later than I thought I had been. I hope I haven't kept you waiting for too long."

"No, I haven't been here long," Inoichi replied as he waved off the teen's apology.

"It's not like you to be late for a meeting; even an informal one," Kosuke commented in an off-hand tone.

"I was… distracted and when I finally I noticed the time, I was already running late."

"And just how much trouble did Tenzou drag you into in his quest to keep you from dwelling on what happened during this morning's meeting?" Inoichi inquired as he watched Kojimaru slide into the chair directly across from him and wrap his hands around the cup of tea that had been poured for him.

"We might have unintentionally given Ibiki a migraine this afternoon."

"I don't want to know."

"Okay, I won't tell you. But I should probably warn you that Ibiki will bitch about it to you the next time you see him."

"I still don't want to know," Inoichi flatly repeated as he silently congratulated himself for requesting four days of time off _before_ the two teens had ticked his boss off with one of their pranks; which would give the younger man's temper plenty of time to cool off before Inoichi was forced to listen to him rant about the prank.

"As amusing as it might be to listen to the latest prank the boys have managed to pull off, I do believe that you had a completely different discussion in mind when you first arrived," Kosuke interjected before Kojimaru could say anything further about what he and his self-claimed brother had done to upset Ibiki this time.

Inoichi sighed as he watched Kojimaru shut down emotionally and curl in on himself in response to the conversation being forcefully dragged back to the reason why Inoichi was there. That was not the most encouraging of reactions but it was much better than the teen losing his temper a second time. Inoichi had counted on Kojimaru's earlier loss of control to temper the teen's reaction to what promised to be an uncomfortable discussion though. The fifteen year old did not like it when he lost control of himself and therefore tended to tamp down hard on his emotions after just such a loss.

"What happened?" Kosuke asked in a concerned but firm tone that demanded an answer.

"I lost control of my temper," Kojimaru quietly admitted before he clammed up.

"That is an oversimplification of what happened and as such, it is an inaccurate summation of the situation," Inoichi corrected before Kosuke could jump to conclusions based upon Kojimaru's lack of details and the dejection that the teen was currently radiating. "Kosuke-san, I'm certain that I don't need to remind you of the discussion we had a few weeks prior to Kojimaru-kun's fifteenth birthday regarding the discovery that his body was being pushed through the stages of puberty at an accelerated rate and the complications said rapid progression might trigger."

"I take it that the normal chemical and hormonal imbalances associated with puberty have begun to affect Kojimaru's emotional control as you predicted they might?"

"That is correct. However, I'm afraid that that is only part of the issue. After Inu-teichou brought Kojimaru's mood swings to Kasai's attention, Kasai called me in to evaluate Kojimaru's current mental state and I arranged for Shikaku to stand in on your behalf due to the fact that you were out of the village at the time that the arrangements were made. The evaluation took place this morning and during the course of the questioning, it was discovered that one aspect of the disguise seal that Akimichi Torifu created for Kojimaru was potentially part of the problem."

"Which aspect…?"

"That portion of the seal that suppressed the full weight of the anger that Kojimaru harbors for a certain traitor," Inoichi carefully answered as he warily monitored the teen for any indication that the vague reference to Orochimaru might have triggered another loss of control. "Tampering with the mind using such seals always carries a measure of risk; that is doubly so in the cases where the mind being tapered with is a child's mind because their brain is still developing."

"What kind of risks?"

"Stunted or warped emotional growth, a skewed perception of reality, and potential physical damage are the three most concerning side effects of using suppression seals that meddled directly with a person's brain or thought process. There are additional factors to consider in Kojimaru's case, however, due to the tampering that the traitor did during the time that Kojimaru was in his hands. We also have to factor in the limited focus of the suppression seal used on him that was tied to a very specific trigger; the traitor's name."

"We already know that the seal affected Kojimaru's perception of reality; that was how we discovered that the seal was either exacerbating or interfering with his current emotional instability brought on by the rapid progression through the stages of puberty. Specifically, the seal was forcing Kojimaru to view the traitor and anything associated with the traitor as unimportant in order to suppress the negative emotions that appeared each time he heard the traitor's name. I suspect that it also suppressed those memories associated with the traitor to a degree."

"It would certainly explain why the nightmares he was expected to have in the wake of his rescue did not occur," Inoichi added as an afterthought as he reviewed his earliest memories of Kojimaru after he'd run into the boy again some six months after his rescue. Shaking his head, Inoichi picked up the thread of his explanation and continued, "I don't believe that we need to worry about any physical damage since that kind of damage would have been noticed either during his yearly medical assessments or during his periodical mental assessments with me."

"That just leaves the potential affect that the seal might have had on his emotional growth and that is something that will take time to determine," Inoichi finished a moment later.

"Are arrangements being made to have the seal removed to prevent it from potentially causing further damage?" Kosuke inquired as he calmly poured another cup of tea for himself and for Kojimaru.

"It's already been removed; Kasai had Jiraiya deal with that almost as soon as the problem was identified. It was the seal's removal coupled with a lack of foresight on Jiraiya's part that led to Kojimaru losing control upon hearing the traitor's name earlier."

"Somehow, I'm not surprised that Jiraiya acted without stopping to consider the consequences," Kosuke snorted in amused exasperation. The older man then shook his head and said, "I take it one of the topics you wished to discuss with me tonight was the potential repercussions that Kojimaru is likely to face as a result of that seal being removed."

"That is correct," Inoichi confirmed with a slight inclination of his head. "The most obvious side-effect of the seal being removed would be a significant reduction in Kojimaru's control over his temper in relation to certain triggers. Of course, a loss of temper also equates to a loss of control over his Hyouton; which translates into a high risk of injuries, collateral damage, and the complete loss of his anonymity outside of the ANBU. I also suspect that Kojimaru will be inundated with nightmares as his subconscious mind attempts to assimilate those memories that were affected by the seal."

"So extreme mood swings, rough nights, and an increased likelihood that he will draw attention to himself," Kosuke translated with a thoughtful hum. "Sounds like I will have my hands full dealing with a typical teenager going through a rebellious stage brought on by the onset of puberty."

Inoichi opened his mouth to urge Kosuke to take things a little more seriously when the sound of smothered laughter coming from Kojimaru made him snap his mouth shut. Apparently, his guardian making light of the situation was just what the gaki had needed to hear in order to regain a measure of equilibrium. Or perhaps it was the calm manner in which Kosuke had just proclaimed that Kojimaru was no different than any other teenager his age that had eased the tension in the boy. Either way, Inoichi felt far better about Kojimaru's chances of coming through this latest ordeal healthy and whole now.

"At least you got off lightly," Inoichi casually complained as he relaxed into his chair. "You only have to deal with a teenaged boy; I will have to deal with a teenaged _girl_ in a decade."

"Why would dealing with a teenaged girl be any different than dealing with a teenaged boy?" Kojimaru curiously asked with a trace of confusion as his laughter trailed off and Inoichi mentally snorted at the teen's cluelessness.

"Because a boy is just one troublemaker while a girl comes with a pack of unruly teenaged boys chasing after said girl."

"I don't remember ever seeing any girls with a bunch of boys chasing after them. It's always been the boys that were being tormented by huge packs of fan-girls from what I've seen," Kojimaru countered with a roll of his eyes.

"And just how many little girls used to chase after you and Tenzou?"

"None; but we never really spent any time with anyone else while we were in the Academy and after we graduated, we were far too busy training and doing missions to hang out with anyone else."

Inoichi very carefully didn't wince at the reminder that both boys had earned their hitai-ate at a very young age less than a year after the official start of the Third Great Shinobi War. It was a miracle that both of them had survived the war given what he knew of their Genin Team's mission record. They may not have attracted as much trouble or attention as say, Team Minato, but Team Fourteen had had their fair share of crap luck while outside of the village.

Kosuke gave a small polite cough to catch Inoichi's wandering attention before he brought the conversation back to the original topic once more as he inquired, "Are the potential complications caused by the removal of the suppression seal going to negatively impact Kojimaru's ANBU membership or shinobi career?"

"Not permanently," Inoichi answered in a measured tone as he carefully chose his words in order to avoid any potential misunderstandings that might have a negative impact on the teen's current state of mind. "Kojimaru's squad has been given two weeks off due now that their latest assignment has ended and that will allow him plenty of time to get a handle on his temper. If, at the end of his vacation, he is still struggling with his control, then he will be temporarily suspended until he has regained a measure of control in order to prevent potentially fatal mishaps while on a mission."

"That is only to be expected," Kosuke murmured as he got up to put on a fresh kettle of water so he could make a second pot of tea. After setting the kettle on the stove and retaking his seat, Kosuke asked, "Where do you suggest we go from here?"

* * *

**Translations:** Japanese to English

Ano – um/uh/er  
Demo – but  
Gaki – brat  
Mannen Genin – Ten-Thousand Year Genin or Eternal Genin  
Okari – welcome home (informal)  
Tadaima – I'm home, I'm back, etc.

**Notes: **

For those who were hoping that Ibiki would scream like a little girl after getting gnawed on by kitten sharp teeth; you need to remember that all shinobi tend to nick or bite their thumbs frequently for seals and summoning. So, Ibiki's lack of reaction was due to the fact that he hadn't felt any pain from the 'bites' since the nerves in his thumb were deadened from repeated 'self-inflicted' injuries.

* * *

**10-18-16: **_Minor edits made to chapter to fix spelling/grammar mistakes and removed unnecessary author's notes._


	35. The Nightmares

**Disclaimer:** _All HP characters are the property of JKR, the WB, and respective publishing companies and all Naruto characters are the property of Masashi Kishimoto. This is nothing more than a simple FanFiction that I have written. I have made no money from this or any of the other stories I have posted on this or other sites._

**Warnings:** _Mild to moderate violence, character death, alternate universe (i.e. kiss canon goodbye), OCC behaviors and personalities, a number of original characters and obscure canon characters to flesh out family trees, random chosen last names to give a number of characters surnames, and who knows what else._

**AN:** _This story is self-beta'd; so there may be occasional grammatical or spelling errors that crop up every now and then and for those I apologize in advance._

* * *

Chapter Thirty-Five: The Nightmares

_October 23, 0295 AtD, 5:33 PM  
Konohagakure no Sato, Hi no Kuni_

Kosuke studiously ignored the phantom ache that sprang up in the missing half of his shortened left leg as he refilled the kettle while he tried very hard not to curse the gods for placing yet another burden on his godson's young shoulders. Shutting off the water, Kosuke snapped the kettle's lid back into place before he transferred the kettle to the stove and ignited the burner. He then made his way back to the table where Kojimaru was nervously playing with his teacup while Inoichi subtly attempted to observe the teen without letting on that he was doing so.

"Where do you suggest we go from here?" Kosuke asked as he reclaimed his seat while keeping one half of his attention on his godson in order to gauge the boy's current mood.

"I've taken the next four days off so that I can help Kojimaru work through the worst of his anger," Inoichi answered as he met Kosuke's gaze across the table. "I've also made arrangements for him to stay with me for the next three or four nights so that I can monitor any nightmares he has to determine whether or not said nightmares run the risk of drawing on his Kekkei Genkai while he is in the throws of a night terror."

"May I ask how you intend to deal with any potential loss of control during the period of observation?"

"Jiraiya has offered to provide me with a large supply of temporary chakra suppression seals and knock-out tags before he leaves the village. I will, of course, only use them in the event that I am unable to talk Kojimaru down from his anger or in the event that his loss of control places himself or another in imminent danger since the goal is for him to be able to control himself; not for him to rely upon temporary stop-gap measures."

"Tenzou said he would be willing to help keep me grounded," Kojimaru interjected as he absently spun his cup and Kosuke nearly sighed when he saw the glint of frost forming on the outside of the heavy cup; a clear indication that his godson was more than a little upset at the moment.

"I will consider including your usual partner in crime _after_ I've determined just how much control over your emotions that you've lost between the rapidly fluctuating hormone levels in your body and the absence of the seal that had been suppressing a significant portion of your emotions."

Kosuke carefully schooled his face in order not to frown when Kojimaru's fumbled with his cup and tipped it over to reveal that the liquid inside of it had frozen solid. Inoichi had obviously noticed that little detail as well as the Jounin sighed wearily as he leaned heavily on the table before he addressed the teen once more.

"I'm fully aware that the two of you have always worked better together, Kojimaru. This is not an attempt to separate the two of you; I know better than to even think about trying to pull something like that on the two of you. However, you also both need to be able to stand alone and stand strong in the absence of the other for those times when circumstances outside of your control pull the two of you apart. You _need_ to be able to rein yourself in without Tenzou's help lest you end up relying so heavily upon him that you cease to be able to function without him."

"I know that. I even understand why it has to be that way. I just don't like it," Kojimaru huffed as he crossed his arms over his chest and scowled at the table. "I also know that no one else really understands why we fight so hard to stay together. I'm sure most people see it as childish behavior on our part but we don't cling to one another out of insecurity or anything like that. Nor do we do it for attention."

"Then why do you? Each time I've asked you in the past, you've merely shrugged your shoulders and claimed that you two were, and I quote, 'far more awesome together'."

"That's because we are far more awesome together!"

"Kojimaru," Kosuke lightly chided in response to his godson's rather childish reply with what was a blatant attempt to deflect the oft asked question.

"Well, we are," Kojimaru muttered as he sank lower in his chair with a small huff. He then sighed and dropped his head backwards to glare at the ceiling before he added, "It feels _wrong_ when we're forced apart."

"What do you mean it feels 'wrong'?" Inoichi asked as his brow furrowed in confusion.

"It's hard to explain… but when we're not in the same room, it feels like there's something crawling under my skin. If we're not in the same house or building, then it feels like there's a hundred somethings crawling under my skin. If we're any further away from each other than that but still within a mile or two of each other, then it feels like those somethings crawling under my skin are on fire. The feeling just gets worse if we're any further away than that and it feels like parts of my soul have been ripped out. It hurts but its not physical pain. It just puts me on edge and makes me irritable."

"Why didn't you say something sooner?"

"It's a weakness that can be used against us and we… no, I feared that we'd be split up and kept from one another in order to 'train' us out of the 'dependency'. I was also afraid that we'd be put through a bunch of tests to find out what was causing the wrongness and to test the limits of what it does to us if we're kept apart for longer times over greater distances. I don't want to find out. It _kills_ when I can't sense Tenzou. I don't like feeling as if parts of me have been torn out of my soul while I'm drowning in a burning emptiness that eats away at my mind."

"Was there ever a time you didn't feel like that when the two of you weren't together?" Kosuke inquired as he thought back to those first few years Kojimaru had lived with him and tried to recall if he'd shown any distress when parted from Tenzou.

"Yeah; back when we were still in the Academy. Well, it still felt like there was something crawling under my skin but I thought it was just because I was always excited about seeing Tenzou again when we weren't together. The feeling kind of grew stronger as we grew older. That was especially true after the medics started using our blood for transfusions after missions. Usually it was me giving blood for Tenzou but there was that one time they had Tenzou give me blood."

Kosuke nodded in response to the answer and felt the small knot of guilt that had just started to form in his heart unravel in response to the confirmation that he had not missed the signs of a younger Kojimaru suffering each time he had parted ways with his friend. Part of him also wondered if Torifu had been aware of the physical aspect of the bond that the two boys had shared and if that was why he'd tried so hard to separate them while they'd been younger. If that had potentially been the other man's attempt to prevent the connection from becoming the exploitable weakness it was today.

After thinking about it for a brief moment, Kosuke was very glad that Kasai had not succeeded. Those two boys had thrived over the years due to their close friendship. He did not think they would be half the shinobi, let alone half the young men, they were now if they hadn't been so determined to protect one another from the world. Their bond might be seen as a weakness from one side of the kunai but from the other side, it was their greatest strength because of how well they worked together.

"While I can understand your wariness of being put through a bunch of 'experiments' to determine the limits of the connection you share with Tenzou, it is something that you should seriously consider doing yourself," Inoichi carefully suggested. "If only so you know what to expect and can learn how to function in the worst case scenario. I would also recommend that you sit down and write out everything you already know about the 'wrongness' you feel and add to the journal as you discover anything new."

"Doing so would allow you to keep a record of what you have experienced and better prepare you for what you can expect to face in the future if there comes a time when you are required to work alone or with another team. It would also give those of us who are responsible for your health an idea of what we need to watch out for. Including information on the phenomenon from Tenzou's perspective would also be beneficial to you both. Storing such a journal in a blood based Storage Seal bound by a blood based Security Seal would prevent an enemy from finding and using it against you."

"I'll think about it," Kojimaru grudgingly offered before he climbed to his feet to prepare another pot of tea as the kettle finally announced itself with a shrill whistle in the background.

While his godson soothed his inner turmoil with the familiar ritual of making tea, Kosuke studied Inoichi as the younger man let out a silent sigh and relaxed in his seat. Kosuke couldn't help but admire the blond's courage, tenacity, and tact in pursuing what was an exceptionally touchy subject while knowing that a single misstep could trigger Kojimaru's temper. And while Kosuke himself had never seen his godson lose complete control of his emotions, he had seen the damage that his Kekkei Genkai could do when his emotions got away from him.

He had never forgotten that terrible day when the boy had crossed paths with a territorial wildcat.

And that was when Kojimaru had been a small child without a lick of control.

The amount of destruction he could do now would be far more significant than what he had done back then.

Speaking of which, Kosuke glanced at Kojimaru's back to make certain the teen was preoccupied with the tea before he caught Inoichi's eye and silently signed, '_How much damage did he cause when he lost control earlier?_'

Inoichi slid his gaze to Kojimaru even as he replied, '_He made a rather big mess of Kasai's office but the damage was easily repaired by both boys._'

'_Was anyone injured?_'

'_No, Tenzou's quick thinking prevented anyone from being harmed._'

Kosuke nodded in relief. He hadn't really thought that his godson would have harmed anyone but even he knew that accidents happened. It was good to know that he wouldn't have to worry about Kojimaru being eaten up inside with guilt for such an accident though. Kosuke hadn't forgotten the nightmares that the boy had suffered through after he'd accidentally killed the wildcat that had attacked him. Nor had he forgotten the handful of times that his godson had come home weighted down with guilt because he'd taken one or more lives during a mission.

Each death weighed heavily on the boy's heart and mind; even the deaths of those remorseless criminals that had been caught in an act of depravity.

That guilt never stopped him from ending the life of an enemy when circumstances called for it. Kojimaru had been far too well trained to freeze up or hesitate when fighting for his life or for the lives of others. That didn't change the fact that the teen didn't like killing.

The elderly Genin pulled himself out of his thoughts when his godson appeared at his elbow to pour him a fresh cup of tea and Kosuke smiled his thanks. Kojimaru offered a small smile in return before he moved around the table to refill Inoichi's cup. The teen then rounded the table to serve himself before he dropped back down into his chair. The next half an hour would pass in complete silence as Kojimaru nursed his tea while the two adults observed the moody boy from the corner of their eye.

At the end of that half an hour, Kosuke set his cup aside and suggested, "Kojimaru, you should go pack what you need for the next couple of days."

"Hai, Kosuke-oji," Kojimaru reluctantly agreed after eyeing the amount of tea remaining in his cup.

Kosuke watched the fifteen year old push himself up from the table and trudge out of the room before he let out a soft sigh and climbed to his feet so he could pour the rest of the tea into a canteen for his godson to take with him.

* * *

_October 23, 0295 AtD, 6:29 PM  
Konohagakure no Sato, Hi no Kuni_

Kojimaru silently followed Inoichi through the darkened isles of the flower shop that his family had opened some thirty years earlier towards the stairs that led up to the twin apartments that sat above the shop. Unlike most of Konoha's clans, the Yamanaka Clan did not have a central clan estate where all of their members resided. Instead, the members of the clan had spread themselves throughout the village so that they were ideally placed to collect rumors and monitor the village's inhabitants for suspicious or self-destructive behavior.

The Clan Head of the Yamanaka Clan was also not considered the leader of the clan as was typical of the other clans that made their home in Konoha. The Yamanaka Clan Head was mostly just a figure head that drew attention away from the clan so that the scattered members could go about their duties without interference. The Clan Head acted as a go-between for the clan and the Hokage; the individual members shunting all of the intelligence that they've gathered through their Clan Head and leaving it to the Clan Head to pass that information onto the Hokage and his advisers.

The line of succession for the Yamanaka Clan Head was also atypical in that it wasn't handed down through 'the main line' of the family. Instead, the title was usually passed to the 'strongest' Yamanaka of each generation. That strength was based upon the each member's affinity for the secret techniques that their clan used to delve into and manipulate the minds of others. Inoichi was the strongest Yamanaka in his generation and the first prodigy to be born into the clan in three generations. His father, Inohiko, had been the strongest in the previous generation while one of his distant cousin's had claimed that title in his grandfather's generation.

The Yamanaka Clan was also the only clan to not have a council of elders to advise the current Clan Head. That was mostly due to the fact that the clan was made up of individual families with loose blood ties and a common affinity for the secret techniques that the clan used. It was also meant to allow their members a measure of anonymity to help deflect the attention their abilities would garner them otherwise; since any gathering that even vaguely resembled a clan meeting would garner far too much attention. It would be far harder to collect those rumors that most people didn't want to get back to the Hokage if everyone could identify a Yamanaka on sight, after all.

It was also the reason why the Yamanaka Clan was the only clan to frequently adopt outsiders into their clan and openly encourage their children to marry outside of the clan; the new blood helping to 'muddy' the lines when it came to physical appearance as well as strengthening their blood as they pulled in those people with high intelligence and strong minds. Inoichi's mother had been such an individual. So had his wife, Ayaka; she'd caught his attention when she had fended off a mental attack from him during a friendly training spar five years earlier.

Kojimaru had originally learned about the unique structure of the Yamanaka Clan back when Shikaku had still been his official babysitter. Being the curious little boy he was, Kojimaru had asked the lazy Nara why he never took him to visit the Yamanaka Clan Estate after his third trip to the Akimichi Farms where the Akimichi Clan lived. Shikaku had immediately foisted him off on a couple of the clan elders with a request to satisfy his 'troublesome' curiosity with the history of the Akimichi, Nara, and Yamanaka Clans and the alliance they had formed long before Konoha existed.

Shaking his head, Kojimaru forcefully pushed the information he'd learned about those three clans to the back of his mind as he reached the top of the stairs. He then turned to his left and trailed after Inoichi as the Jounin passed through the door into the apartment where he lived with his wife and daughter. There was another apartment off to the right of the stairs but that one belonged to Inoichi's parents; Kojimaru didn't really know Yamanaka Chiharu (Inohiko's wife and Inoichi's mother) all that well but he had seen Inohiko on several occasions (usually when Inoichi was unavailable to view his memories after completing a troublesome mission).

Kojimaru's thoughts were derailed two seconds later when a human sized kunai plowed into his left leg and nearly knocked him on his butt. Bending in half, the teen eyed the wide grin on the face of a precocious three year old with shoulder length pale blonde hair and bright pupil-less teal eyes. The adorable tyke was Inoichi's daughter, Ino. And while he didn't spend any where near as much time with the girl as he did with Shikamaru, Kojimaru had babysat her more than once over the past three years.

"Oi, Inoichi; did you know you have a leech infestation?" Kojimaru inquired as he gave the little girl clinging to him a small smirk.

"Ino-chan not leech! Ino-chan's a purty flower bud! My daddy told me so!" Ino protested as she pouted up at the teen.

"Are you sure about that? I don't think flower buds are in the habit of latching onto every warm body that wanders through the door," Kojimaru countered as he reached down to pretend to pry Ino from his leg. "They also don't cling so tightly to the people they grab. Leeches, on the other hand, do both of those things. So that would make you a leech."

"Daddy! Tell Koji-baka I not leech!" Ino bellowed at the top of her lungs the moment she noticed the man was no longer in the room and Kojimaru couldn't help but burst out laughing in response to the sheer indignation he could hear in her voice.

"Ino-chan, what has kaasan told you about calling people names?" Yamanaka Ayaka chided as she popped out of the kitchen and fisted her hands on her hips and Kojimaru quickly stifled his laughter when the formidable woman turned her annoyed glare on him next. "And you should know better than to rile her up with your infernal teasing, Kojimaru-kun!"

"Gomen," Kojimaru automatically offered up as he plucked the 'Ino-bud' off of his leg and promptly draped her over his shoulder; upside down. The three year old squealed in surprise over the sudden change in perspective (her little legs churning the air beside his head) while Kojimaru offered up a slightly mischievous grin to Inoichi's wife.

Ayaka rolled her eyes and huffed in exasperation before she ordered, "No roughhousing inside," and retreated back into the kitchen.

"Daddy! Save me!" Ino begged as her father reemerged from the back of the apartment.

"Kojimaru-kun, you appear to have sprouted a small growth since walking through the door," Inoichi drawled as he eyed his daughter's slowly reddening face.

"Nah, I picked up a leech the moment I waded into your apartment."

Ino huffed and crossed her arms over her chest in response to being called a leech again and Inoichi chuckled at his daughter's reaction. Kojimaru snickered when Ino pouted at her dad for not helping her and then spun her around so that she was right side up before he blew a raspberry on the back of her neck that set her to giggling madly as she squirmed in his arms. He spent another minute tickling her before he set her down a split second later and watched as she ran away from him to cling to her father's leg while trying to scowl at Kojimaru through her fading giggles.

"See, leech."

Ino promptly stuck her tongue out at Kojimaru in response to that while Inoichi sighed and consolingly patted his daughter's head. The young Tokubetsu Jounin could see the corners of the older shinobi's lips curling upwards though and knew he was amused by his daughter's antics; the man positively doted on Ino and thought everything she did was adorable.

"Why don't you go put your things in the guestroom?" Inoichi suggested at that point and Kojimaru had to fight to keep the smile on his face even as he nodded in compliance.

It wasn't that he didn't like visiting the small family. He did. He adored Ino (and enjoyed teasing her) and he was rather fond of Ayaka (and most especially her taiyaki). It was the fact that he wasn't really here for one of his random little visits to charm a batch of his favorite dessert out of Ayaka that made it hard for him to smile. This wasn't his first time spending the night 'under observation' either but the last time he'd been there for 'health' reasons had been after his godfather had returned to active duty in the wake of the Kyuubi's attack just two years earlier.

As soon as he reached the guestroom, Kojimaru let the smile slide off of his face as he dropped down onto the bed and buried his face in his hands. From the moment that the newly named Yuri had been led away by Yagi-teichou and he'd had that stupid surprise evaluation sprung on him, his emotions had been see-sawing out of control. It'd only grown worse after the stupid seal had been removed and Jiraiya had said _that_ man's name. If not for Tenzou distracting him for most of the afternoon (once his evaluation had ended), then Kojimaru was certain that he'd have lost it a second time at some point.

Just thinking about his earlier loss of control and the reason why he'd snapped had the temperature in the room dropping rapidly. Slamming a mental door down on his emotions, Kojimaru forced himself not to think of the traitor.

_I'm so pathetic_, Kojimaru thought to himself as he dropped backwards on the bed and threw an arm over his eyes once the temperature around him had returned to normal. _I can't even go two seconds without my thoughts drifting to that traitorous bastard. He never seemed all that important before and now I can't stop thinking about him. I was supposed to have gotten over this last year!_

Rolling over onto his stomach, Kojimaru pressed his face into the mattress and clenched his jaw tightly as he fought to hold back the scream he could feel building in his chest. He couldn't afford to lose control. Not now. And not here. Not when Ino and Ayaka were present and unable to defend themselves from his Hyouton if he should destroy the apartment like he had nearly destroyed Kasai's office; good thing the Commander never kept anything important in his office or the destruction he had caused earlier would have gotten him in far more trouble.

Drawing in a deep breath through his nose, Kojimaru held it for a slow count of ten before he slowly let it out through his mouth. He repeated the process several more times until he felt his mind empty itself and his body slowly relax as his frustration and anger slowly bled away with each breath. After spending close to ten minutes in the meditative trance, Kojimaru slowly rolled over onto his side and allowed his breathing to return to normal as he stared blankly at the cream colored wall in front of him. His eyes slid shut a moment later and he allowed his mental and emotional exhaustion pull him down into Morpheus's arms.

His dreams that night would be plagued by nightmares and phantom pains as the fractured memories of his time in Orochimaru's labs freely seeped up through the cracks in his subconsciousness for the first time in years. He'd spend close to four hours tossing and turning as pained whimpers and whines issued forth from his mouth before a firm hand on his shoulder snapped him out of the endless stream of terrible dreams. Kojimaru bolted upright with a strangled scream in response to the sudden touch and unconsciously lashed out at the one touching him while he was still caught up in the nightmares.

The moment his fist connected, Kojimaru heard a sharp verbal curse followed by a nonsensical order before he found himself being flipped over onto his stomach and pressed down into the mattress when he continued to struggle against his captor. Terror immediately filled him due to his difficulty in separating reality from his nightmares and memories and the teen reflexively relaxed his control on his Kekkei Genkai so he could protect himself. Another sharp curse rang in his ear as the temperature around him plunged below freezing while vines of ice and wood attacked his attacker.

He felt a hand slap something crinkly to the back of his neck seconds later and his mind automatically translated the sound into 'seal tag'. That only made him struggle harder because there were only a handful of seals that he knew that could be used in the middle of a fight and any one of them meant death or capture. He went from 'capture and interrogate' mode into 'maim and kill' mode in response to the new threat and almost screamed when he found himself struggling to keep hold of his chakra as he sought to use his Hyouton to eliminate his attacker.

He would be snapped out of his panic two minutes later when a familiar voice loudly cut through the fog of fear that had blanketed his mind as it ordered, "Damn it all to hell, Kojimaru! Stop! It was just a nightmare! No one is going to hurt you! You're safe!"

Kojimaru immediately stilled the moment he finally recognized Inoichi's voice and quickly ceased attacking the weight pinning him to the bed. Reality slammed into him a heartbeat later and Kojimaru choked on a whine turned sob as he immediately realized he'd just tried to _kill _Inoichi in his panic. He tried to squirm his way free of the older man but found himself firmly pinned in place. He then tried to slap his hand on the wall, thinking to get away using his Mokuton, but soon discovered that he was too far away and while he could merge with his ice and wood creations, they were currently wrapped up around Inoichi and that would have defeated the purpose of getting away from the man.

"Calm down, Kojimaru," Inoichi ordered into his ear; the man's voice calm and firm. "I'm not letting you up until you are in complete control of yourself; I'm not about to allow you to run off just because you woke up fighting from a nightmare."

The artificial redhead went limp beneath Inoichi as he ceased trying to escape as ordered. It would take ten agonizingly slow minutes for his breathing and the erratic beat of heart to smooth out into something resembling normal. Bringing his skittering emotions back under control would take even longer. Once he was in full control of himself again, dealing with his Kekkei Genkai was rather easy as he simply drew his chakra back into his body to withdraw the vines of ice and wood that had tangled themselves around Inoichi as well as the two ice spikes he'd managed to form after he'd been tagged with whatever seal Inoichi had slapped on him.

"Arigatou," Inoichi murmured as he eased his hold on Kojimaru and pulled the tag off of his neck. "Now, so long as you don't try to disappear on me, I will let you up."

The man suited actions to words a moment later and Kojimaru remained face down on the bed for nearly another full minute before he slowly rolled over so he could see Inoichi. He couldn't help but flinch when the faint light filtering into the guest room from the hallway allowed him to see the vivid bruise blossoming across Inoichi's left cheek from where he'd socked the man in his face. The thin line of blood staining the side of his neck from where an ice spike had sliced through the skin made the blood drain from his face as he saw just how close he'd come to killing the Jounin and he made to twist away from the man in shame.

"I'm not so old that I can't defend myself against a little punk like you, gaki," Inoichi blandly drawled as he reached out to snag hold of Kojimaru's chin to prevent him from looking away. "I was well aware of the risks when I stepped in here to wake you up from your nightmare and while that first punch caught me off guard, I was prepared for you to lash out at me with your Kekkei Genkai. I will live."

Kojimaru's seal-induced blue eyes glittered with a sheen of half frozen tears for several seconds before he blinked away the obstruction. The hand on his chin disappeared a moment later before it returned to ruffle his hair. The teen attempted to dislodge the hand with a half-hearted swat out of habit before he sighed and simply endured the indignity of having his hair tousled.

"Come on, I'll make you a cup of tea."

"You suck at making tea," Kojimaru retorted in a raspy voice that was thick with emotion.

"Fine, how about I make you a cup of hot chocolate instead?" Inoichi offered around a snort of amusement in response to the familiar insult over his brewing skills.

"Is there any taiyaki to go with it?" Kojimaru inquired in a hopeful voice.

"Maybe."

"Okay."

Kojimaru then pushed himself upright before he slid off the bed. Inoichi got up next and gestured for the teen to lead the way and Kojimaru silently padded out of the guestroom with Inoichi following on his heels. They reached the kitchen just a few minutes later and Kojimaru silently slid into a chair at the table when Inoichi gave him a gentle push in that direction. He then spent the next ten minutes watching Inoichi heat up the milk, sugar, and chocolate to make the two of them some hot chocolate.

Once he'd finished blending the milk, sugar, and chocolate, Inoichi poured it into two large mugs and topped them both off with a generous swirl of whipped cream. He then carried both mugs to the table and set one in front of Kojimaru while the other was set down in front of the chair beside him before he grabbed a covered platter from the counter and plonked it on the table between the two mugs. Kojimaru automatically pulled the foil off of the platter and let out an exasperated huff when he found it filled with shark-shaped taiyaki instead of the usual fish-shaped ones.

"I found the shark molds at the market and immediately thought of you, Same no Kouji," Inoichi supplied with a chuckle as he dropped down into the chair next to Kojimaru. "Ayaka thought they were cute when I brought them home for her."

"I'm going to pluck Kawanari bald and die his skin bright pink for daring to speak that name within hearing range of you and the others back in August," Kojimaru groused before he bit into the tail-fin of the treat he'd picked up from the top of the small heap. His mouth was filled with the slightly bitter taste of cranberries coupled with the mild flavor of vanilla pudding a moment later and he let out a pleased hum over the pleasant contrasting flavors and textures of the new filling combination.

Close to an hour would pass by in companionable silence as the two shinobi drank their hot chocolate and ate their way through the plate of taiyaki. And while Kojimaru didn't find the chocolate any where near as comforting as he found tea, he did enjoy the soothing warmth and pleasant taste of the rich beverage. It helped wash away the last traces of his nightmares, if not the lingering guilt he still felt over his panicked attempt to skewer Inoichi. At the end of that hour, Inoichi finally initiated the discussion that Kojimaru had known had been coming since the moment he'd stopped fighting the man.

"What were you dreaming about when I woke you up?"

"My memories of the lab. _He_ was there too. _He_ had that stupid smug smirk on his face as he stood above me. And there was an endless stream of faceless people cutting me open and burning me with their chakra."

"Did you notice any difference in the fragmented memories from your time in the lab during the nightmare when compared to what you remembered of them prior to the seal being altered?"

"Yeah, a bit," Kojimaru reluctantly admitted and Inoichi nodded once before he gestured for Kojimaru to verbalize the differences that he'd noticed. "They were sharper. And they felt far more real to me. I could _feel_ the pain from them. It didn't really hurt but every single nerve in my body ached in memory of the pain. I felt hands ghosting over me too. And when you grabbed me… it seemed like part of the nightmare at first."

"How clear were the memories? Could you actually see and comprehend what was happening in them or was it just a jumbled blur of impressions and pain like they were previously?"

Kojimaru shuddered as the memories in question rose up to flood his mind's eye once more before he ruthlessly shoved them back down into the depths of his mind. He did _not_ want to see them again. He didn't want to talk about them either and so he pressed his lips tightly together and shook his head no.

Inoichi sighed heavily in response to his refusal to speak before he quietly stated, "Kojimaru, you can either talk about the memories so I know what I'm working with here or I can go in and view them instead. Either way, you are going to have to face them so that I can help you put them behind you."

The teen scowled and hunched his shoulders upon hearing that. There mere thought of being forced to relive those particular memories just so Inoichi could view them once more made him feel sick to his stomach. After keeping his mouth shut for another full minute, he grudgingly began speaking; his voice cracking ever other word as he tried not to lose control of himself and his emotions yet again.

"They're sort of clearer. They're still just little bits and pieces but I can see more details in each little snippet than I could before. I can see bloody scalpels flashing beneath glaring lights and in some of them I can feel the blades tugging and slicing through me. In others, I can feel my chakra pathways and coils rupturing as a large amount of foreign chakra is forced into my chakra network. And worst of all, is the sound of _that_ man's voice as he stands above me and coldly orders his faceless underlings to 'shut me up' while his fingers are buried two knuckles deep inside of me."

"Kuso," Inoichi muttered under his breath before Kojimaru felt the man wrap an arm around him and half pull off of his chair into a hug. "I'd always known that you'd woken up during some of the procedures that were performed on you but I never dreamed that you'd gotten a clear enough picture of what had been done to you that you would be able to clearly comprehend what was happening to you at the time."

Kojimaru said nothing as he focused on keeping his breathing slow and steady lest he injure Inoichi further due to the way his emotions were once more skittering out of his control. Part of him also felt that speaking of those memories was wrong because they were the one thing that'd he'd never spoken about to anyone, not even Tenzou. Guilt ate away at the fifteen year old as he remembered just how much he'd been hiding from everyone but most especially from his brother and to a lesser extent from his godfather.

Those memories had just never seemed all that important in the past though.

Another part of him just felt weary; weary of being haunted by the past and beyond weary of constantly fighting against himself just to stay in control of himself.

And so Kojimaru allowed Inoichi to hold him close despite the discomfort generated by Inoichi's body heat. The older shinobi temporarily anchored him to the here and now and gave him a reason to cling to that tenuous thread of control he was maintaining by strength of will alone. There was no sense of comfort or companionship to be gained from the embrace though. And Kojimaru desperately wished that Tenzou was there with him.

He would get his wish a mere eight minutes later when Tenzou turned up unannounced and let himself in via the wooden framework of the building.

Inoichi complained about uninvited guests for all of ten seconds before he allowed Tenzou to drag Kojimaru off to the guestroom.

* * *

**Translations:** Japanese to English

Arigatou – thank you  
Baka – Idiot  
Gaki – brat  
Gomen – I'm sorry (informal)  
Kawanari – one-eyed otter (Kojimaru's otter mentor); kawauso (river otter) + kaminari (thunder)  
Kuso – swear word  
Oi – hey  
Same no Kouji – Shark Bait

* * *

**AN:** _Toddler Ino-chan is just so adorable. I tried to make the way Ino interacted with Kojimaru slightly different than how Shikamaru interacts with him (Ino loud and slightly abrasive and Shika affectionate and manipulative) but I'm not certain how successful I was in that endeavor. I also tried to maintain her more forceful personality; hence her calling him Koji-baka instead of Koji-nii. That brief scene also shows just how much influence Inoichi has had on Kojimaru as the reason why Kojimaru called all little girl flower buds was due to the fact that Inoichi called his daughter a flower bud. _

_I'm also not sure how successful I was in conveying the Yamanaka Clan's secret occupation. They are supposed to be an invisible counterpart to the Uchiha Police Force in that their eyes are turned inwards as they keep watch over the civilians and shinobi alike whiles they go about their lives (whereas the Uchiha are the open watchers and peace keepers). I guess you could call them a hidden spy network that hides in plain sight so they can collect rumors and who only answer to the Hokage._

_In any case, there will be more insights in to both the Yamanaka Clan and several of Konoha's other clans scattered throughout future chapters._

_Moving on, this chapter had a lot of insights on what makes Kojimaru the person he is at this point in the story. There is still a LOT that is unknown about what is at work when it comes to the bond that Kojimaru and Tenzou share and some of it is impossible for the adults in their lives to uncover simply because Kojimaru's magic is completely unknown to them outside of the information that he'd been born with a secondary energy that was similar to chakra (see chap 3 for details on that). _

_I am still trying to work some of that information into the story-line but there is some stuff that they will just not learn because they have limited sources available. It also doesn't help that there is no convenient HP adult character to turn up to 'fill in the blanks' because Harry/Kojimaru ended up in a completely different world. I was tempted to have Fawkes forge a connection between the worlds but felt that was far too easy and overdone trick. So, as I said before, there will be NO WAY back for Kojimaru and there will be NO ONE joining him in the Naruto Verse. ~ Jenn_

**10-18-16: **_Minor edits made to chapter to fix spelling/grammar mistakes and removed unnecessary author's notes._


	36. The Report

**Disclaimer:** _All HP characters are the property of JKR, the WB, and respective publishing companies and all Naruto characters are the property of Masashi Kishimoto. This is nothing more than a simple FanFiction that I have written. I have made no money from this or any of the other stories I have posted on this or other sites._

**Warnings:** _Mild to moderate violence, character death, alternate universe (i.e. kiss canon goodbye), OCC behaviors and personalities, a number of original characters and obscure canon characters to flesh out family trees, random chosen last names to give a number of characters surnames, and who knows what else._

**AN:** _This story is self-beta'd; so there may be occasional grammatical or spelling errors that crop up every now and then and for those I apologize in advance._

* * *

Chapter Thirty-Six: The Report

_October 26, 0295 AtD, 9:51 PM  
Konohagakure no Sato, Hi no Kuni_

Shikaku idly watched as his teammate pushed his way through a crowd of Chuunin in order to reach the booth that he and Chouza had commandeered a half an hour earlier. His lips twitched in amusement when a couple of the Chuunin attempted to take offense at being shoved only for the haggard blond to snap and snarl at them until they apologized to him and fled to a safer part of the bar. It was always rather amusing for the Nara when Inoichi lost the polite and friendly mask he usually wore in public.

Or rather, it was always amusing to see other people's reactions to Inoichi dropping his mask.

Of course, it would be far more amusing if the reason that Inoichi's mask was slipping at the moment wasn't related to a certain troublesome teenager. Sighing, Shikaku flagged down a passing waitress and ordered another three rounds of drinks and appetizers as Inoichi finally reached their booth. As the blond dropped down heavily onto the wrap around bench beside Chouza, Shikaku eyed the rather prominent bruise on Inoichi's face before he noted the dark circles under Inoichi's eyes and the various bandages adorning his person.

"You look like hell," Chouza bluntly announced as he too took in Inoichi's current less-than-perfect state.

"Nice to see you too, Chouza," Inoichi half-growled and half-muttered as he leaned forward to pillow his head in his arms on top of the table.

"I take it that things are as bad as we feared they might be?" Shikaku inquired as he pulled his eyes away from Inoichi to scan the room for the other individuals they had invited to their little meeting.

"Yes and no; in some ways it's even worse," Inoichi replied without looking up.

"What do you mean by 'worse'?" Shikaku demanded with a frown as he snapped his gaze back to Inoichi.

"I'm not answering that until the others get here; I refuse to repeat myself."

"Mendoukusei," Shikaku complained as he slouched deeper into the bench seat.

A bark of strangled laughter rose from Inoichi while Chouza just shook his head and grinned at the two of them. Shikaku wanted to be amused at the situation too but he's far too worried about a certain troublesome teen. And that too was rather troublesome. He was not supposed to be the worrywart in this group – that'd always been Inoichi's job. Shikaku had always been the one that was supposed to sigh and drift off to sleep while assuring the others that everything will be fine and there was no need for any thing so troublesome as worrying.

And yet here he was worrying over Kojimaru's state of mind, _again_.

To be fair, there was cause to worry. He couldn't quite forget the deadly spike of ice that had come so very close to eviscerating him after Kojimaru had lost control of his temper and his Hyouton in Kasai's office a few days ago. Nor could he forget the amount of damage the teen had done to Kasai's office in less than five minutes. Part of him was still surprised that the entire building didn't crash down on their heads after he'd seen the sheer number of holes that had littered the walls and ceiling of the office. Not to mention the damage that the ice must have done to the floor.

Shikaku's frown deepened as he recalled that the only reason why he hadn't been skewered was because of Tenzou's quick thinking. Oh, he very much appreciated the brown-eyed teen's quick actions. That wasn't the problem. The problem was that Tenzou had reacted several precious seconds _before_ Kojimaru's meltdown occurred. It was as if Tenzou had known what was going to happen before it happened. And that should not have been possible.

Then again, those two were so in sync with one another that Tenzou _might_ have sensed the slight fluctuations of Kojimaru's chakra. However, if that was the case, then he should not have been able to get his wall up in time to prevent any injuries completely. If only because Kojimaru hadn't lost his head until Jiraiya had spoken Orochimaru's name but by that time, Tenzou had already been moving to intervene. Shikaku supposed the gaki might have been acting upon what he knew of Kojimaru's temper and based upon what it was he had known that Jiraiya was testing.

The arrival of the waitress with their drinks and Chouza's snacks drew Shikaku out of his musings and he dug a handful of ryo out of his pocket so that he could pay for the drinks and food. The woman had barely vanished onto the crowded barroom floor when Jiraiya turned up dragging a disgruntled looking Hatake Kakashi along behind him. A brief glance at Inoichi (who was still draped on the table) had Shikaku sliding closer to Chouza so that the two new arrivals could sit down. Normally, Shikaku wouldn't have bothered but he didn't think Inoichi was going to budge for anything short of a dire, village-wide emergency.

Or little Ino-chan; his teammate would move heaven and earth for his precious little princess even if he had one foot in the grave.

Another waitress turned up with more drinks before Shikaku had even finished shifting his seat and this time it was Kakashi who forked out the cash for them. Though, from the scowl on the younger Jounin's face, it wasn't exactly his choice to buy the drinks and Shikaku figured that Jiraiya had bullied the teen into paying for them. The last person to arrive was Morino Ibiki and the sadistic Head of the Torture and Interrogation Department looked more than a little displeased. This time, Kakashi was the one to grudgingly give up his seat at the end of the booth because Ibiki gave him a pointed look and a growl when Kakashi had made to climb to his feet in an attempt to keep the end seat.

There were still three people missing (Kasai, Kosuke, and Kisuke) but Shikaku knew those three men would not be joining them for their discussion. Kasai had declined because he couldn't show up in his mask without the rest of the customers panicking over his presence and he wasn't about to let anyone know who he was under the mask (his job depended upon his anonymity). Kosuke and Kisuke were absent for similar reasons; though in their case it was their desire to protect their wards' identities that had kept them away.

That didn't meant that those three men wouldn't be filled in on what was discussed in this informal meeting. Shikaku would be filling both Kosuke and Kisuke in first thing tomorrow afternoon (because doing it first thing in the morning would be too troublesome) while Jiraiya or Kakashi would be the one to report to Kasai. No, scratch that. Inoichi had probably already given a preliminary report to Kasai (since the Commander was Kojimaru's direct supervisor); that would certainly explain why he wasn't in the mood to repeat himself. That would leave Kakashi to do a follow up report for Kasai and Jiraiya to fill the Hokage in on what they discussed tonight.

He did wonder why Ibiki had been included in this meeting though. Chouza was there because he knew both Kojimaru and Tenzou (even if he hadn't been as involved in their lives as he and Inoichi had been). The heavyset man would also be able to offer up an 'outsider's' opinion. Kakashi had only been invited because he was the teens' ANBU Captain and because the gaki would have thrown a huge temper tantrum if he'd been left out. The silver haired teen disliked being kept out of the loop on general principle and the fact that two of his subordinates were swathed in layers upon layers of mysteries probably irked the hell out of him.

Jiraiya was there because he was fully aware of who both boys were and because he was a fuuinjutsu expert. Chouza qualified as a fuuinjutsu expert as well but few people knew that. Shikaku wasn't entirely certain that Jiraiya was aware of the Akimichi Clan's extensive knowledge and use of seals and he wasn't about to clue the man in on that information if he wasn't. Few people outside of the Akimichi, Nara, and Yamanaka Clans were aware of that information; the Hokage, Kasai, and the shopkeeper of the store where the clan sold their more popular seals were all that came to mind.

Oh, and both Kojimaru and Tenzou knew as well. But those two boys were pretty much considered to be part of the Nara Clan for some troublesome reason. Probably because Shikaku had been their official babysitter when they were younger and both boys had been semi-permanent (if part-time) occupants of the Nara Estate for the past twelve years. In fact, they still turned up every now and then even though Shikaku hadn't been their official babysitter in years. Their status as honorary members of the clan was how Shikaku had gotten away with naming a non-clansman as Shikamaru's godfather.

Of course, he was paying for that decision now; the damn gaki had taken great joy in corrupting his son with un-Nara-like behavior.

_Ah, well, at least Yoshino is happy with the troublesome brat's troublesome influence,_ Shikaku thought to himself as he watched Jiraiya activate a minor privacy seal tag to prevent their conversation from being overheard now that everyone had at least one drink at hand and plenty of extras on the table so they wouldn't need to worry about ordering more.

Shaking his head, Shikaku stretched out his legs to kick Inoichi under the table before he demanded, "Everyone's here, Inoichi; will you tell me what the hell you meant by 'worse' now?"

Inoichi lifted his head to give Shikaku a mock glare of annoyance for the kick before he sighed and pushed himself all the way up. Shikaku noted the way Kakashi, Ibiki, and Jiraiya all eyed the lurid bruise on Inoichi's face with open curiosity before they took in the rest of his appearance.

"That's quite an interesting badge you have on your face," Jiraiya commented once his little inspection was complete as he poured out his third saucer of sake since sitting down. "I'm surprised you didn't have a medic fix that for you so it didn't ruin your pretty-boy image."

"I did; twice," Inoichi countered as he reached up to lightly brush his fingers over the bruise that ran from an inch below his left eye down to his jaw and from his left ear to his nose. "They managed to lighten it by three shades and heal the hairline fracture that came with it but deemed that it would be better to allow the rest of the bruise to fade naturally."

"What did you do to earn that little trinket?" Kakashi asked curiously as he twisted the lid off of the bottle of beer he'd snagged from the collection of drinks covering the table.

"Nothing, technically; I merely misjudged the extent to which Tora had been caught up in his nightmare when I went to wake him up and he woke up swinging. I suspect that the fist he hit me with had been reinforced with one of his Kekkei Genkai because it hurt like a bitch when he socked me. As bad as that was, what I really could have done without was his attempt to castrate me with his ice before I could finish snapping him out of his nightmare."

Both Kakashi and Jiraiya choked on their drinks the moment Inoichi announced that Kojimaru had attempted to hit him below the belt and Shikaku smirked in response to his teammate's sense of timing. He knew his friend had purposefully waited until both men had been drinking when he'd added that little nugget of information.

"I never realized the gaki had such a cruel streak," Jiraiya muttered as he brushed sake off of his face and clothes before he mopped up what he'd spilled on the table.

"Nice to know he learned something from all of those lessons I gave him," Ibiki drawled with a sadistically smug little smirk on his face.

"He didn't get that from your lessons," Shikaku corrected as he twirled his empty sake saucer in circles while he debated on whether or not he wanted to bother with the effort of pouring himself another shot. "The crotch was one of the gaki's favorite targets when he was knee-high to a stag because he thought it was so funny to see grown men brought to their knees when they were hit there. I thought he'd out-grown that stage once he hit double digits."

"Apparently not," Chouza interjected with a snort in between bites of grilled squid and all of them chuckled.

"Why didn't you use one of the suppression tags I drew up for you before he tried to make a woman out of you?" Jiraiya inquired with a slight frown after the laughter died down. "I made those for you for a reason, you know; and it wasn't just to practice my calligraphy skills."

"I did," Inoichi retorted with a scowl. "He didn't try to neuter me until after I'd slapped the tag on him."

"I thought you said he tried to castrate you with his Hyouton?" Kakashi asked as he frowned beneath his mask. "How was that possible if you'd used a chakra suppression tag on him? Or did he rip it off first?"

"He did use his Hyouton in his attempt to neuter me and no, he didn't remove the tag; the tag didn't work. I thought maybe the tag itself had been a dud or that I'd messed up the activation due to the fact that his attacks turned lethal the moment I pressed the tag to the back of his neck. That wasn't the problem though. The problem is that suppression tags don't work properly on Tora."

"Wait… what?" Shikaku blurted out in surprise as he fumbled the sake saucer he'd been playing with.

"How is that possible?" Kakashi inquired again at the same time as Jiraiya demanded, "Why is this the first time that I'm hearing about suppression tags being ineffective on the gaki?"

"Has any one ever tried to slap a suppression seal on Tora in the past?" Shikaku asked in response to Jiraiya's demand as he tried to recall if he'd ever seen a chakra suppression tag used on Kojimaru during the numerous training sessions he'd observed throughout the years he'd known the teen.

"Yes, Kasai and I used them extensively during the two years we trained the boys and their teammate," Ibiki answered in a thoughtful tone. "The tags worked on the gaki just fine during those training sessions."

"Did they?" Inoichi countered as he snagged an unopened bottle of beer. "Or did they only appear to work because Tora knew he wasn't supposed to draw on his chakra while wearing them? It certainly wouldn't be out of character for him to 'play' along with the rules during his training sessions. I know for a fact that that was how he managed to hide the true extent of his stamina and endurance from several of his instructors when he was younger."

"Are you implying that Tora downplayed his abilities just so he could slack off on his training?" Kakashi demanded as he sat up in his seat and scowled.

"No, Tora _never_ slacks off on his training," Shikaku automatically defended as he shot the younger Jounin an annoyed look in response to the implied insult against his pseudo nephew/son.

"Tell me, Kakashi; do you remember the state that Tora was in at the end of the Hyuuga Affair?" Inoichi inquired softly as he leaned his elbows on the table and pinned the teen with intense blue eyes and Kakashi gave a single jerky nod in response to the question and the near-glare. "Now picture a six year old in the same condition because he'd been driven into the ground just for the sake of training."

Shikaku watched the blood immediately drain from the young prodigy's face and knew the teen immediately understood the implications. The shadow user then deftly poured himself a new shot of sake to rid himself of the mental image that Inoichi had just painted and quickly downed it while he listened to Inoichi finish driving the point he was trying to make to Kakashi home.

"Tora taught himself to judge how far he pushed himself in his training by mimicking Kuma. His reason for doing so in the beginning was rather childish; he hadn't wanted to surpass his only friend at the time. However, a side effect of his determination to moderate how far he pushed his body was that he prevented his then fragile body from being broken because he was pushed too hard, too fast by his teachers and trainers in an attempt to take advantage of the high stamina and endurance that his healing ability gives him. His healing ability is very much a double-edged sword that could just as easily kill him as help him."

"I knew that there were drawbacks to his ability but hadn't connected his ridiculously high stamina and endurance to his healing ability," Kakashi quietly admitted.

"Most people don't but what you have to keep in mind is that his healing Kekkei Genkai constantly washes away the usual signs of fatigue that a body develops through exercise or a lack of sleep. His reserves also replenish at a rate that's at least three times faster than the average chakra user. He could, theoretically, run full out for three days non-stop while going without food or sleep due to the size of his chakra reserves in combination with his healing ability. He'd pay for it afterwards but that doesn't change the fact that he could do it."

"And he technically hasn't reached full maturity yet," Chouza tacked on the end of Inoichi's spiel.

"None of that tells me why you think things are worse than we feared they would be," Shikaku interjected at that point in an effort to prevent the conversation drifting further down the tangent that it had turned down.

"I'm still waiting to hear more information on why you think my chakra suppression tags failed," Jiraiya stated before Inoichi could give Shikaku a reply.

"Look, I've already gone over everything once today with Kasai and I'm not in the mood to sit here while all of you hit me with dozens of questions about every little thing because I'd really like to get some rest tonight," Inoichi growled out as he shot all five of his listeners a glare. "So, if you'd all shut up and just listen, it would be a lot easier for me to give you the information you want."

Shikaku wisely kept his mouth shut. His blond friend was usually fairly even tempered but that didn't mean he couldn't get angry or that he wasn't willing to yell and bash heads if someone annoyed him enough. That was especially true when he was overly tired and based upon the dark smudges under his eyes; Inoichi hadn't slept all that well the last few nights (if he'd slept at all). Once everyone had been properly glared into submission, Inoichi took a long drink of his beer before he settled back in his seat and began giving the group a run down of what he'd learned over the past three days.

"Since everyone here is already aware of what happened in Kasai's office on the twenty-third, I will skip rehashing those details and start with my observations of Tora's behavior during the discussion I held with his guardian several hours after the meeting with Kasai. As expected, Tora was rather subdued when he arrived for that meeting and he only spoke up when he was directly addressed by one of us. He mostly remained in control of himself during that discussion and the worst he did was freeze his tea once."

"Once the meeting with his guardian had been finished, I took Tora home with me so that I could keep an eye on him for the next couple of nights to determine how deeply the seal's removal would affect his sleeping patterns. I'd suspected that he would have nightmares but I never anticipated just how badly those nightmares would affect him; I don't think he got a single hour of uninterrupted sleep while I monitored him. In fact, I spent more time sitting in the kitchen talking with him about his nightmares than he spent in bed each night. Not even Kuma's presence reduced the number or severity of his nightmares."

"If his nights were terrible, his days were even worse. The past three days, I dragged him out to one of the more remote training grounds at the crack of dawn to work with him on maintaining control of his temper. The first day, I decided to trigger his temper and wait him out in order to see the full extent of the damage he could do if left unchecked. I'm still not certain if that was a stroke of brilliance on my part or if it was the biggest mistake I've ever made."

"His temper had transformed the entire training ground into a glacier and by the time it stopped expanding two hours later and I could get in to check on him, he'd frozen himself inside a chunk of ice that was ten feet thick from his ice spikes merging into a single block. When I first found him, I thought his Hyouton had killed him due to his complete loss of control and I lost at least ten years of my life. Luckily for me, things weren't as dire as they had seemed at the time or I'd have been lynched by a mob of angry friends and adopted family."

"I didn't discover that he had survived being frozen inside of his own creation until I had tried to chip my way to him with a kunai. The sound of metal striking ice caught his attention and he slid out of the ice much like the two of them slide out of a tree when they use their Mokuton to travel through wood. It would take him the rest of the day to fix the training ground but on the plus side, he was much calmer as we talked about his anger and his memories while he worked."

Inoichi paused at that point to finish off his beer and Shikaku watched Kakashi and Jiraiya both twitch with impatience at the short break. He suspected that Ibiki was just as impatient but the younger man was as expressive as a brick wall and Shikaku couldn't be bothered to put in the effort to try and read his non-existent expressions right that second. Chouza, on the other hand, was a rather patient man while Shikaku himself was just too lazy to let himself get worked up despite the fact that he was more than a little impatient as well.

"The second day wasn't much better; though thankfully the glacier didn't make a second appearance. Instead, I spent the entire day trying to get Tora to snap himself out of his anger. I didn't have much success. However, I did learn several things over the course of the day. Tora can't fight while he is lost in his rage; he freezes up and lets his ice take control of him. The chakra suppression seal tags don't work properly; the seal merely slows the rate his ice grows at if he is already channeling chakra when the seal is applied."

"Tora only loses complete control of his temper and Hyouton when Orochimaru is mentioned; his other known triggers still only make him angry enough to drop the temperature and grow hoarfrost. Additionally, Tora did not once draw on his Mokuton when lost in his anger; the only time he lost control of his Mokuton was when he felt even a smidgen of fear alongside of his anger. And lastly, the ice grown while he is in a rage is far colder than the ice he grows normally and it can not be scratched by an ordinary kunai or melted; not even when a high level katon jutsu is used on it."

"Today's session was both the most productive and the most frustrating," Inoichi continued after opening another beer and wetting his throat again. "Unlike the first two sessions, I brought Kuma in today to help keep Tora grounded after I'd gotten a fairly clear picture of how little control Tora had over himself once he loses his temper. That was how I learned that Tora will not lose control of himself over hearing Orochimaru's name as long as Kuma is touching him. If the two of them are within arm's reach of one another, Kuma can snap Tora out of his rage within seconds just by calling his name or touching him."

"If there is more than three feet separating them, it takes a little more effort for Kuma to snap Tora out of it. It also takes him far longer to snap Tora out of it if Kuma allows Tora's temper to rage long enough for his Hyouton to start forming solid ice as opposed to just forming hoarfrost; even if they are standing within three feet of each other. I also learned that physical contact or close proximity with someone other than Kuma does not have the same effect on Tora. However, being in physical contact with him after he's lost his temper does reduce the chances of being skewered by ice as the initial barrier that forms is defensive in nature, not offensive, despite the deadly nature of the ice formations created."

"So basically, the best way to snap Tora out of his rage (for those of us who are not named Kuma) is to slap a knock-out tag on him or to talk him down before he sinks too deep; the former is obviously far easier than the latter nine times out of ten," Inoichi finished a touch sourly as he dropped back against the booth.

Shikaku hummed thoughtfully as he eyed his friend for a moment while the others digested everything they had just been told about Tora. After a minute or two had passed, Shikaku asked, "How much can you tell us about what you learned from your talks with Tora without breaking his trust?"

"Not as much as I'm sure you all would like to hear," Inoichi answered tiredly. "Tora is even more skittish about trusting anyone outside of his small, self-made family than he was previously. The reason for his renewed and increased trust issues stem from his memories of his time in Orochimaru's hands. The seal suppressing his anger had also affected those memories; dulling and blurring the details simply because they were connected to Orochimaru. And with the seal no longer affecting those memories…"

"Kuso!" Shikaku loudly swore before Inoichi could say anything further as he immediately understood the implications of what Inoichi had been in the process of revealing. "Chikushou!"

"Precisely," Inoichi gravely agreed.

"One of you want to share with the rest of the class?" Jiraiya demanded in an irritated tone.

"Tora's healing ability is capable of filtering sedatives out of his bloodstream; meaning that a normal eight hour dose is lucky to knock him out for an hour," Shikaku reminded the older man. "Sleeping seals are never used during surgical procedures due to the fact that the chakra in an active tag would interfere with said procedures. Essentially, that means that Tora frequently and repeatedly woke up during any procedures performed on him."

"What that basically means is that Tora remembers far more of what had been done to him as it was done to him than we previously believed due to the seal affecting those memories," Inoichi added as soon as Shikaku had paused to take a breath. "On top of that, Tora is older and has read all of the reports pertaining to Orochimaru's experiments and that basically means that he is now capable of comprehending far more of what he heard, felt, and saw in those memories."

"What does that have to do with the gaki's trust issues?" Kakashi asked in confusion.

"Orochimaru was not working alone," Chouza quietly pointed out as he set the zucchini tempura he'd been about to eat aside. "He had dozens of underlings working with him and only a small handful of his subordinates were caught during the raid on his lab. There is no telling how many of them are still living in the village today because they managed to escape notice in the wake of Orochimaru's escape."

"Tora calls those underlings that came into contact with him faceless because their faces all blurred together," Inoichi continued as he leaned forward to proper his elbows on the table so he could cradle his head in his hands. "He is afraid to trust people he doesn't know because he doesn't know if this stranger or that neighbor was one of the faceless ones that contributed to his pain and terror during his time in the lab. The fact that those memories are clearer and more detailed than they were prior to his seal being removed only intensified that insecurity even if they still don't give him actual faces to assign to his former tormentors."

"It was my understanding that Tora's memories of that time had been damaged," Ibiki stated with a deep frown and a tone that almost sounded concerned to Shikaku's ears.

"Those memories are damaged but that doesn't mean that he can't remember anything; the memories were damaged, not erased or removed. If anything, you can liken the damage done to Tora's memories to the damage that would be done to a mirror or sheet of glass that was dropped. Each individual memory sequence was shattered into hundreds of pieces and while the smallest of those pieces were lost, the larger fragments still remain and provide some insight into the original contents even if they are all out of sequence."

"Has he opened up to you in regards to what he can now remember of his time in Orochimaru's hands?" Ibiki inquired as his left hand briefly rose to brush across the bandana that Shikaku knew hid the torture scars that decorated the other man's scalp and the reason for his [Ibiki's] earlier concern became readily apparent to the Nara.

"Somewhat; he doesn't really like to talk about those memories and he tends to gloss over the details when coerced into talking about them. However, the fact that he has talked about them at all is encouraging because he hadn't talked about them in the past but that might have been due to the seal making them unimportant in his mind. The same applies to his nightmares due to the fact that all of his current nightmares are fueled by those same memories."

"Were his memories and nightmares the only topics you broached with him during your talks?" Kakashi inquired in a bland tone that practically screamed curiosity.

"No, we also spoke about those topics that came up during his evaluation on the twenty-third and the information he'd gotten from the investigation reports on Orochimaru's depravity. I also spoke to him at length about those missions he had been on that necessitated a visit to my office since he first earned his hitai-ate to ensure that the seal hadn't skewed my assessments of his mental health during his original visits. The last topic discussed were the mood swings he's been experiencing as a result of entering puberty."

"Is there anything else at all that you can tell us?" Jiraiya asked as he pushed another beer towards Inoichi.

"No, not if you're asking for more information about what Tora and I discussed over the past few days. I can, however, tell you that aside from being rather quiet and subdued…"

"Meaning he pretty much clammed up and tried to make himself invisible without actually resorting to using a jutsu to hide or escape," Shikaku muttered under his breath.

"…he functioned and behaved fairly normal when around others," Inoichi continued without acknowledging Shikaku's interruption. "That was especially true whenever he was in the presence of my wife and daughter. I know most of his behavior around them was a mask but the fact that he had enough control over his emotions to maintain such a mask in their presence for hours at a time was heartening. If only because it was evidence that he still has some control. The fact that he didn't bother to mask his inner turmoil when I was alone with him was also a good sign since it meant that he wasn't trying to hide anything from me."

"The last bit of information I think you might be interested to know, Jiraiya, is that the seals that hide Tora's original eye color no longer flicker when he feels any strong, negative emotions like they used to. I'm not certain if that change is because the mental suppression seal was interfering with the disguise seal or if it was because the original seal that changed the color of his eyes had a flaw in the design though."

Silence fell over the group as soon as Inoichi finished his informal report. Shikaku eyed the blond for a moment before he pushed yet another beer in his direction. The lazy Jounin then poured himself out another shot of sake as he allowed all of the information he'd just learned about Kojimaru to settle in his mind. He could now almost understand Inoichi's earlier claim that things were, in some ways, worse than they had expected they would be. He also hadn't missed the fact that there was much that Inoichi wasn't saying and figured that the things that had been left unsaid would give him a clearer picture of the teen's current state of mind.

_Mendoukusei; what a troublesome headache_, Shikaku silently complained as he sipped at his sake.

"What kind of tests did you run to determine that the chakra suppression seals did not work on Tora?" Jiraiya asked after several minutes of silence had passed.

"I slapped more than half of the tags you gave me on him. I attempted to use them while he was channeling chakra, I placed them on him and had him attempt to channel chakra, and I even tagged him a couple of times while he was asleep to test him when he didn't know I was testing him. If he was actively using his chakra, the tags only made it more difficult for him to draw on his chakra and slowed down the growth of any ice. On the times he wasn't channeling chakra when I tagged him, he managed to form one to two jutsu out of ten attempts and they would be less effective than if he had not been wearing the tag. And if he didn't know the tag was there, he'd pull off three in five jutsu."

"What are the odds that his apparent immunity to chakra suppression seals is related to the reason why genjutsu doesn't work on Tora?" Ibiki inquired thoughtfully.

"Right around fifty/fifty," Shikaku answered without giving the question much thought. "It's the constant fluctuations in Tora's chakra that we've theorized are a by-product of his healing ability that prevents a genjutsu from snagging hold of his senses. The standard chakra suppression seal is designed to cut all access to a person's chakra by placing a barrier over the chakra network that blocks the person's chakra. The twisting nature of Tora's chakra due to the fluctuations could very well allow just enough of his chakra to slip through the barrier and allow him to still use jutsu."

"What about the 'corrupted' nature of Tora's chakra? Could that also be a factor in why the seal doesn't work?" Kakashi asked in the wake of Shikaku's answer.

Shikaku automatically nodded in response to the question before he offered up the information that had been on the official reports from the research team put together to look into Orochimaru's experiments; a team that Shikaku's uncle had been in charge of all those years ago.

"Yes and no; the corrupted nature of Tora's chakra is closely linked to his healing ability according to all of the tests that had been run on him, his blood, and his chakra. That ability also stemmed from a secondary source of energy that was similar to but at the same time different from chakra that Tora had been born with according to the limited information that had been pulled from Orochimaru's research notes and from Tora's medical exam at the time. At some point after the Mokuton was integrated into his system, the secondary energy merged with his chakra and the end product of that merger is his chakra corrupted."

"Despite the corruption, his 'chakra' still behaves like chakra in most cases. The known exceptions are his inborn healing ability, the higher than normal rate of his chakra production, his immunity to genjutsu, and his inability to use any of the Shodai's Mokuton Jutsu in their original forms – an inability which would theoretically extend to his use of the Hyouton as well if we had access to any of the Yuki Clan's original techniques for him to try and learn. His chakra also doesn't react well with plant matter… or actually, I should say that his chakra reacts all too well with plant matter due to his Mokuton; causing even dead leaves to sprout new life."

"Yeah, I've seen him grow clones from dry twigs and old leaves at the drop of a hat," Kakashi snorted. "I also saw him coldly decimate an entire army of his own clones using his Hyouton. I'm not looking forward to facing one of his ice creatures in a training spar; those damn things are vicious."

"You think his ice creatures are frightening? You should see the carnage he can wreck when he brings a five mile stretch of forest to life using his Mokuton," Ibiki countered with sadistic glee. "He single-handedly wiped out an entire gang of seventeen slavers in two minutes flat after he had witnessed one of them backhand a little boy that wouldn't stop crying for his okaasan. It took us three days to piece what was left of the slavers back together so that they could be properly identified in order for their bounties to be collected."

"Tora dislikes child abusers," Inoichi drawled in a knowing tone.

"That's an understatement if I ever heard one," Shikaku deadpanned as he recalled the other stories he'd heard about Tora's encounters with various child abusers over the years.

"What are the chances that Tora executed the two men that he caught molesting his little stray?" Kakashi suddenly asked in a pensive tone.

"Non-existent; Tora does know how to exercise restraint and he knew he was on a mission at the time," Inoichi replied without even stopping to think about his answer. "However, if he ever crosses paths with either man again in the future, you can bet your ass and a full year's pay that they won't survive that second encounter. If not for the potential political fallout, he probably would have taken the time off so that he could return to Kumo to take care of those loose ends but Tora is not foolish enough to risk triggering the war that we barely dodged just to eliminate those two men."

"That's good to know," Kakashi murmured as he relaxed in his seat once more.

"As I was saying," Shikaku stated in order to steer the conversation back to Kakashi's original question regarding Kojimaru's corrupted chakra. "The number of areas where the corrupted nature of Tora's chakra actually interferes with what we'd considered the natural order of chakra usage are fairly limited. If the interference wasn't limited, then none of the seals used on him would work and he in turn would not be able to use even a basic storage seal or exploding tag let alone any of the non-elemental jutsu he knows."

"The fact that it does affect a handful of areas is why I said it was possible that the corrupted nature of his chakra could be affecting the seals. Specifically, the fluctuations in his chakra (which are created from minuscule changes in the balance of the physical to spiritual energy ratio that makes up his chakra), as I mentioned earlier, could be disrupting the seal's effectiveness."

Kakashi thought about that information for a moment before he silently acknowledge Shikaku's point with a brief nod before he asked, "And you said it was those fluctuations that made him immune to genjutsu as well?"

"Yes; the constant little changes to his chakra prevent another's chakra from latching onto his senses because that chakra is disrupted by said changes," Ibiki confirmed since he had been the one to discover and extensively test Kojimaru's immunity to genjutsu over the two years he'd trained the teen.

"Does that include Sharingan induced genjutsu?"

"That… I don't know; there were no Sharingan users in my department during the period of time that I helped train the two gaki," Ibiki replied as he frowned in response to the glaring hole in his testing methods. "You will have to test him on that and let me know whether or not he is capable of shrugging off a Sharingan induced genjutsu."

"Yeah, no; that's not going to happen," Kakashi countered with a head shake and a slight bitter edge to his voice. "I'm banned from learning Sharingan activated genjutsu courtesy of the current Clan Head; they're still pissed as hell about Obito giving me his eye on his death bed. And I'm not on good enough terms with any member of the clan to approach them to request they help me test Tora's immunity to their precious techniques. They'd be far more likely to demand Tora's head on the platter in outrage that an 'orphan of no standing' dared defy them by being immune to their jutsu."

Shikaku winced as he could easily see the Uchiha Fugaku doing just that. The man was a hard-nosed bastard that didn't understand the concept of compromise. The man's wife was far less uptight but in order to get access to Mikoto (Fugaku's wife) one would have to go through Fugaku. And the rest of the clan consistently bowed to the whims of their Clan Head bar a few brave souls that dared to buck the system. Shikaku knew part of the problem was the accusations and rumors that there had been an Uchiha behind the Kyuubi's attack but he didn't know how much truth was in those rumors.

Even taking into account the increased hostilities between the Uchiha Clan and the rest of the village over their supposed involvement in the Kyuubi's attack didn't change the fact that the members of the Uchiha Clan as a whole were rather stubborn and prideful. They had been that way for many decades. However, there had been a time when they had been willing to compromise in the past; if they hadn't been willing to do that, then they never would have been one of the founding clans of Konoha. Sadly, their ability to set their pride aside and work with others seems to have died at some point between the First and Third Great Shinobi Wars.

"There should be at least one Uchiha within the ANBU Corps that you could approach," Ibiki stated as his earlier frown turned into an actual scowl.

"If there is, I've not yet had the dubious pleasure of crossing paths with them," Kakashi replied sardonically. "Or if I did encounter one, they simply didn't announce themselves."

"I'd recommend approaching Uchiha Shisui if either of you wish to test Tora's genjutsu immunity against a Sharingan," Jiraiya suggested before Ibiki could make another comment. "The boy's still young yet, barely in his teens if I recall correctly, but he's considered to be the most talented Uchiha in his generation. He's also well known for disregarding the usual rules and traditions that the rest of the Uchiha Clan follow religiously. Sensei recently earmarked him for potential ANBU recruitment during the next round of open enrollment for the Corps."

"There's no point in making any plans to test Tora against a Sharingan Genjutsu just yet," Inoichi interjected before either Kakashi or Ibiki could comment on Jiraiya's suggestion. "His mental and emotional state is far too chaotic right now and adding the stress of fighting off yet another form of genjutsu is not going to do him any favors. Also, you need to keep in mind that his body chemistry is changing right now and it could well throw off the results of any tests. It's also entirely possible that he could lose his immunity to genjutsu by the time he's finished going through puberty."

"All the more reason to start making plans to have him retested," Ibiki stated with a small smirk and Shikaku almost felt sorry for Kojimaru; that smirk promised pain and humiliation. "It wouldn't hurt to send Kuma through a few more tests as well.

"They pranked you recently; didn't they?" Shikaku asked out of the blue and Ibiki immediately scowled in response to the question. "I'll take that as a yes. What did you do to earn a prank?"

"Nothing; the little snots decided to prank me in an attempt to get me to give their other friend some time off."

"It's not an 'attempt' if you give into their demands," Inoichi flatly corrected his boss and Shikaku nearly snickered at the flat look that Ibiki gave the blond for his comment.

"What did they hit you with?" Kakashi asked with obvious glee; though whether that was in appreciation of a well played prank or if it was because someone else had been targeted by the two teens, Shikaku couldn't say.

"They infiltrated the T and I Building without anyone noticing and filled my office with at least three dozen stray cats."

There was a beat of silence before everyone not named Ibiki burst out laughing. The intimidating Department Head let them laugh it up for another two minutes before he sucked all of the amusement out of the air with his next statement.

"And inadvertently uncovered several months worth of sabotage to my department's holding cells and in the wake of that mess, I unearthed three traitors and two spies that had been with my department for _years_."

"Mendoukusei," Shikaku complained as he pinched his nose. "Those two have the oddest damn luck."

"I couldn't have said it better myself," Ibiki retorted with an undertone of frustration. "That little complication is why I requested to be included in this meeting." Ibiki then turned to Inoichi and asked, "Will you sign off on Tora doing a side-job for me tomorrow?"

"What is it you wanted him to do?"

"In exchange for giving their friend the requested time off, I asked for two days from both boys in return. I intend to have them test the department's security. They agreed and initially offered me the twenty-seventh and the fourth. The only question is whether or not you think Tora is cable of participating in the evaluation at the moment."

"Even if he's not; letting him go through with the 'mission' would be one way of determining how his current issues will affect his performance within a relatively controlled environment," Kakashi pointed out. "While Tora and Kuma are evaluating your staff and poking at the building's security, someone else could easily take the opportunity to evaluate Tora."

"Are you volunteering to do said evaluation?" Inoichi countered as he considered the teen from over the top of his fourth bottle of beer.

"I've got nothing better to do; so, sure, why not," Kakashi agreed after a slight moment's hesitation.

"I'll have one of my subordinates also evaluate both teens," Ibiki offered on the heels of Kakashi's agreement. "Since Tora being off his game is liable to trip Kuma up due to how close they are and how long they've worked together."

"You'll want to find a way to completely disguise your chakra signature since your signature is unique enough that it'd be far too easy to pick it out of a crowd and Kuma is a chakra sensor while Tora is chakra sensitive," Shikaku suggested once it looked like no one was going to object. "Otherwise they'll know you're there as soon as you get close enough for them to sense you and if you're following them around in an effort to observe them, they'll know something is up."

"He can use the same seal that's used to disguise Kuma and Tora's signatures," Jiraiya stated as he glanced up from the notebook that he'd pulled out at some point. "I'll draw one up for him once we're done here."

As the others finished hashing out the details of the spur-of-the-moment live evaluation, Shikaku silently worried about the chances of Kojimaru and Tenzou's hidden identities being uncovered by Kakashi. He already knew that Kojimaru didn't yet trust the Jounin and in his current state of emotional turmoil, the perceived threat to his godfather might just set him off. At the same time, he knew that Kakashi needed to see that Kojimaru could keep his personal issues out of the mission because otherwise the silver haired teen would never trust the younger teen.

Shikaku happened to catch Inoichi's eye at that precise moment and the moment their gazes connected, the blond tapped his foot against Shikaku's ankle to spell out, '_I've got it covered'_, in Morse Code. Shikaku inclined his head slightly to let him know that the message had been received; that was one less thing he had to worry about at least. Snagging hold of the sake bottle that he'd been nursing since he'd arrived, Shikaku poured out the last shot of wine into his saucer as their little informal meeting wound to a close now that Inoichi had finished his report.

Less than a half an hour later, Jiraiya dropped the privacy barrier as all six of them said their goodbyes to one another and began migrating towards the door. As he parted ways with his teammates, Inoichi passed Shikaku a scroll holding a copy of his official report on Kojimaru's current mental state and a copy of Inoichi's personal notes on what he'd learned from his discussions with Kojimaru. Basically, Shikaku had just been handed all of the information that Inoichi had not been able to speak about in the presence of the others.

A brief review of that information before he went to bed would leave Shikaku with a foul taste in the back of his throat and a migraine.

It also left him with hope that Kojimaru would be able to pull himself together and pull through this latest issue.

_He might even manage to survive puberty with his troublesome personality in tact_, Shikaku dryly thought to himself as he slid into bed beside his wife.

* * *

**Translations:** Japanese to English

Chikushou – damn/damn it  
Gaki – brat  
Kuso – swear word  
Mendoukusei – 'how troublesome', 'what a drag', or 'this sucks'

* * *

**10-18-16: **_Minor edits made to chapter to fix spelling/grammar mistakes and removed unnecessary author's notes._


	37. The Chaos

**Disclaimer:** _All HP characters are the property of JKR, the WB, and respective publishing companies and all Naruto characters are the property of Masashi Kishimoto. This is nothing more than a simple FanFiction that I have written. I have made no money from this or any of the other stories I have posted on this or other sites._

**Warnings:** _Mild to moderate violence, character death, alternate universe (i.e. kiss canon goodbye), OCC behaviors and personalities, a number of original characters and obscure canon characters to flesh out family trees, random chosen last names to give a number of characters surnames, and who knows what else._

**AN:** _This story is self-beta'd; so there may be occasional grammatical or spelling errors that crop up every now and then and for those I apologize in advance._

* * *

Chapter Thirty-Seven: The Chaos

_October 27, 0295 AtD, 5:57 AM  
Konohagakure no Sato, Hi no Kuni_

Kojimaru silently pulled on the charcoal gray, long-sleeved shirt that was part of the T and I Department's standard uniform and deftly buttoned the shirt while stepping into his shinobi sandals. The fifteen year old felt rather weird wearing the stolen clothes (Aoba had 'liberated' uniforms for both Kojimaru and Tenzou from the department's supply) since it wasn't the standard Konoha uniform or his ANBU uniform that he normally wore but he ignored that feeling. Once the last button had been fastened, he smoothed the shirt down and clipped his utility pouch to his belt before tying his hitai-ate to his forehead.

Next, Kojimaru pulled out his sealing kit and created a floating ice mirror so he could begin the annoying process of changing the color of his eyes without using his disguise seal. What made it so annoying was that he had to draw the temporary seals onto the lids of his eyes (both top and bottom) in order for them to work since they were only temporary seals instead of semi-permanent ones like the ones that normally hid his identity. Still, the hassle of drawing the seals each time he wanted to hide his eyes was far better than having Kasai bitch at him again about his unique eye color.

"Are you ready yet?" Tenzou inquired as he poked his head through the open guestroom door at Inoichi's apartment several minutes later.

"Almost, I just have to charge the seals to change the color of my eyes," Kojimaru replied as he inked in the last seal on his left eyelid and channeled a thread of chakra into the seals on both eyes to activate them. He was rewarded with his normally vibrant green eyes fading to a washed out green flecked with threads of brown and blue. He blinked a couple of times to rid himself of the strange crawling sensation the activated seals had generated before he banished the ice mirror, temporarily reactivated his usual disguise seals, and stated, "I'm ready now."

"Then let's go! We're supposed to meet Aoba around the back of the Facility by six-fifteen and it's already after six."

"It only takes us three minutes to get there from here if we use the trees," Kojimaru dryly reminded his brother even as he snagged hold of the pack holding his supplies for their 'mission' and joined Tenzou in the hallway. "There's still more than enough time for me to make breakfast and fill up my canteen."

"Breakfast is already on the table and I filled your canteen while you were getting ready."

"Then what's the rush?"

"There is no rush; you're just being a girl and taking far too long to get ready."

Kojimaru narrowed his eyes at the teasing insult before he shoved a fistful of snow into Tenzou's smirking face. He would have dumped an entire snow drift on him if it wasn't for the fact that they were in Inoichi's apartment and that Ayaka would refuse to make him taiyaki for a month for 'roughhousing' inside. And she would have immediately known it was him that had made the mess because she knew he had the Hyouton; she just didn't know that he had been one of the survivors from Orochimaru's experiments. She also didn't know about his Mokuton.

Tenzou was still snickering under his breath as the two of them reached the kitchen and Kojimaru was pretending to be annoyed with him for the girl comment. He wasn't really all that mad though; he was long used to being called the kunoichi of Team Fourteen – not that he ever appreciated being called a girl. At least he was no longer scrawny enough to be mistaken for a girl. Smithing had done wonders for his physique. Now, if only he could gain a few more inches in height so that he was no longer the shortest one in their circle of friends and family.

Breakfast was eaten without fanfare and the two teens promptly washed their dishes before they slipped out of the apartment to meet up with Aoba. They would take a short detour on the way there in order to deactivate their disguise seals (as suggested by Inoichi) before Kojimaru used his Kamen no Jutsu to make a few minor changes so that they wouldn't be recognized. The two of them would meet up with Aoba two minutes later and the eighteen year old was quick to smuggle them into the T and I Building without them resorting to using their Mokuton.

As soon as they were inside, all three teens split up. Aoba headed for the office he shared with five other Chuunin; his part in their mission was mostly over (he'd also been tasked with evaluating his coworkers responses to the 'infiltration' by Ibiki). Tenzou headed down to the holding cells where he would make it look like the current prisoners had escaped by slapping them with knock-out tags and dragging them inside of the walls for safe-keeping (it wouldn't do for the prisoners to actually escape, after all). Tenzou would also disconnect the building's security cameras on his way down. And Kojimaru was going to hit the file rooms where the public and classified files were kept.

Aside from using their Mokuton to stash their 'targets' in the walls or floors in some of their initial preparations, neither teen would openly (or actively) use their Kekkei Genkai to carry out their assigned tasks. The reason for that restriction was due to the fact that their Mokuton gave them an unfair advantage that allowed them to bypass most security. And since the object of this mission was to test the current security of the facility, bypassing said security with their bloodline limits wouldn't actually help them uncover the holes in said security.

That limitation made their jobs far harder but not impossible; since they were rather good at sneaking around.

Not that Kojimaru would be doing any of said sneaking. In fact, Kojimaru boldly strode through the building as if he had every right to be there. Few people looked twice at those who both looked and acted like they belonged. It was a lesson most infiltrators were taught but few people could pull it off without considerable preparation ahead of time. Kojimaru was familiar enough with the way the T and I Dept. was run (from the two years he spent working with the department as part of Team Kage) that it took little to no effort for him to act like he belonged there.

It also helped that he knew most of the staff by name and could easily strike up a conversation with them without making them suspicious of him even if those he spoke to couldn't actually put a name to his current face. Ibiki's recent house cleaning actually made it easier to get away with the ruse since everyone assumed that all of the spies and traitors had been caught already. That was actually a mark against them; since spotting infiltrators should have been child's play to them after receiving the standard departmental training.

Each person who failed to question his presence with suspicion was discreetly tagged with a splinter that sprouted a tiny leaf the size of a lady-bug on the back of their left shoulder. Those little markers were intended to let Aoba know that those people had encountered Kojimaru and had not questioned his presence.

In between messing with the heads of Ibiki's staff, Kojimaru would slip into various offices to deliver 'important files' to various key individuals. He would also hand out stacks of memos for the Chuunin working in the building to pass out to each other. Each file and memo was actually a primed exploding paint tag that had been disguised as ordinary paperwork with his Kamen no Jutsu. All it would take to activate the tags was someone writing on them or otherwise damaging the paper thin disguise; such as someone crumpling up one of the memos.

An hour and forty-eight minutes later, Kojimaru found himself standing in the first of three file rooms. This particular file room held all of the non-classified paperwork; the stuff that was actually considered public record and accessible to civilians and shinobi alike. You still had to have a good reason to access said information but you'd only have to jump through a single hoop or two to get permission to view it. The teen took a moment to poke at the weak security seals that were intended to prevent theft before he set to work 'sabotaging' the room.

He started by simply shifting the secured file cabinets into the floor. He then unsealed ten pounds of still warm ashes and dumped a small pile where each cabinet had once sat. He also added a few melted bits of metal and charred pieces of wood to make it look more realistic. He slipped out of the room once that was done and tossed a smoke bomb into the file room before he shut the door behind him. The second file room (where some of the more restricted files that were only available for those who were Chuunin or higher were kept) was given the same treatment.

The third and final file storage room was given a little bit different treatment as that was where the classified information (the kind of stuff that was restricted to those Jounin level or higher) was kept. After checking the security seals (for any signs of tampering), Kojimaru would once again hide them in the floor before he replaced them with exact replicas that had been grown by Tenzou and given a metal appearance courtesy of Kojimaru's Kamen no Jutsu. All of the fake cabinets were then left open so that their obviously empty drawers were on display.

By the time he'd slipped out of that room, the entire building was up in arms and running around trying to do damage control after the two sabotaged file rooms had been discovered. The level of panic only doubled when the 'theft' in the last file room had been discovered and Kojimaru was quick to join in the man hunt for the culprits that had gotten into the building. Instead of actually helping though, the teen was quick to sew more discord as he instigated fights between those individuals with clashing personalities, announced false sightings, and generally made things more difficult for those trying to keep order.

He was nearly caught by Kotetsu and Izumo after twenty minutes of increasing the mayhem and Kojimaru was forced to play hide and seek from the two pranksters until he could change his face in order to throw them off. He would run into them again just a couple of minutes later but before they could even grow suspicious of him, an alarm sounded as the displacement of the prisoners had finally been discovered. Pandemonium followed in the wake of that discovery and Kojimaru slipped away before he could be pressed into a search party or caught.

Kojimaru left the building just five minutes later and met back up with Tenzou on the roof of the building next door to the T and I Facility. The two of them shared a brief smirk in response to the chaos they'd instigated before they settled in to wait out the clean-up efforts. Knowing it was going to be a few hours before Ibiki sent for them, Kojimaru broke out his canteen of tea and unsealed a pair of cups so he could share with his brother. Tenzou produced a large bag of candied walnuts a moment later and the two of them slowly worked their way through the bag of treats while sipping tea and comparing notes.

"I think the two of you gave Ibiki a heart attack," Aoba announced nearly two hours later when he joined them on the roof. "He's more than a little upset that you managed to hide his prisoners, prank almost every single person on staff, take out the security cameras without warning, steal his files, and send the entire staff into a complete and utter panic without getting caught."

"Kotetsu and Izumo almost caught me," Kojimaru admitted around a sip of tea. "I'd been manipulating some of the more abrasive Chuunin into accusing each other for losing the 'thief' I'd been 'helping' them chase down and they picked up on it. Took me a good ten minutes to shake them off of me long enough for me to change my face and slip out. If not for that close call, I probably would have stuck around a little longer just to sew a bit more confusion."

"I had a one close call while I was dealing with the security cameras," Tenzou added after he'd swallowed the handful of walnuts he'd been chewing. "The Tokubetsu Jounin on duty almost saw me switch the cords but he got distracted at the last second by one of the Chuunin working in the office with him."

"Idiots," Aoba snorted as he idly scratched at the red paint that was splattered across the left side of his face from where he'd gotten caught up in one of the exploding paint tags that someone else had triggered.

"You can say that again," Kojimaru agreed as he finished his tea and put away the cups they'd been using. "I must have spoken to at least two dozen people who never once bothered to ask me my name let alone question what I was doing running about the place without an escort. I suppose the fact that I was carrying around 'official' documents with the department's logo stamped on them might have given me enough of an appearance of legitimacy that it lulled them into complacency."

"At least you didn't walk in on a pair of Chuunin using one of the unoccupied cells for a quickie," Tenzou grumbled as he climbed to his feet. "I really could have done without seeing that."

Kojimaru tried to imagine why someone would _want_ to have sex in a prison cell before he shook his head and decided that he was probably better off not knowing. Aoba, on the other hand, just laughed at Tenzou's misfortune. The three of them then spent another three minutes insulting various idiots before Aoba dragged the two younger teens to Ibiki's office so that they could give a verbal report on the observations they had made during their 'sabotage' mission. They would find Ibiki, the Hokage, Kasai, and Inoichi waiting for them when they arrived.

"I distinctly remember telling you to test my security; not destroy my Department," Ibiki growled at them the moment the three of them stepped into his office and closed the door behind them.

"At least we left the building standing for you," Tenzou replied with a smirk as the three of them lined up in front of Ibiki's desk where the Hokage was seated with Kasai at his back.

"Your restraint is appreciated, I'm sure," the Hokage dryly stated as he raked his gaze between the three of them. "Walk us through your unofficial mission."

Kojimaru felt an urge to squirm when he felt the weight of the Hokage's gaze land on him. This was the first time he had been in the same room with Sandaime since the day he'd learned his little stray was the Jinchuuriki of the Nibi and he couldn't help but recall how much it had hurt when the Hokage had accused him of being put on earth just to make him miserable. That accusation still stung now. And part of him wished the floor would open up and swallow him whole so that he wouldn't have to hear the Hokage repeat his accusation once the man learned about his current self control issues.

The young Tokubetsu Jounin snapped out of the small downward spiral he'd just slipped into when Tenzou brushed his fingers lightly against Kojimaru's arm just seconds after he'd started withdrawing into himself. Taking a deep breath, Kojimaru copied the gesture to silently thank his brother for keeping him grounded. His attention was then drawn to Aoba when the eighteen year old stepped forward to start their report; a habit left over from the time when both younger boys had let the older boy take the lead.

"My part was actually fairly small; as Tenzou and Kojimaru's inside man, it was basically my job to get them inside of the building without getting caught and to observe the fallout once their presence had been discovered. In order to accomplish the first objective, I borrowed a pair of uniforms in their size from supply at the end of my shift yesterday and passed them over to them on the way home. I then met up with them first thing this morning and let them in the back door. Once inside, I headed to the office I share with the other interrogators and went about my usual routine while the two of them split up to hit their chosen targets."

"Roughly forty-five minutes after parting company with the others, I got hit by an explosion of paint when my partner set off one of the disguised exploding paint tags that had been distributed throughout the building. It would take another hour before the alarm was sounded though. I spent the rest of the exercise ghosting through shadows to observe my coworkers. I paid special attention to those individuals that had been marked with a small leaf since those were people that had directly interacted with Kojimaru and hadn't treated him with suspicion. After order had been restored, I was sent to fetch Kojimaru and Tenzou so they could be debriefed."

"Why wasn't the alarm sounded sooner?" Kasai inquired in an annoyed tone.

"The exploding paint tags were brushed off as being a simple prank. It wasn't until someone noticed that the storage rooms where the public information and general files were kept had been 'torched' that anyone realized that there was a security breech. Everyone then panicked when it was discovered that the classified files had been 'stolen'. The missing prisoners were discovered roughly twenty-five minutes after that and everything went to hell in a hand-basket."

"Are you implying that these two openly walked into the building, spent close to two hours walking about in plain sight, and _no one_ questioned their presence or noticed what they were doing?" Ibiki demanded in irritation.

"Part of that was because the first thing I did was unplug the main surge for the security monitors and switch the cord out with an extension cord that was hooked up to nothing; blinding the surveillance team to what was happening throughout the building," Tenzou explained with a small smirk. "After I was finished there, I made my way to the holding cells by way of the kitchen. I didn't encounter many people once I was down in the cell block and those who saw me ignored me because I'd been 'volunteered' to deliver breakfast to the prisoners by the Chuunin on kitchen duty."

Kojimaru ducked his head and smothered the smirk that threatened to split his face when Ibiki snarled out a few colorful invectives under his breath in response to that revelation. Part of the reason why they'd shown up so early that morning was to take advantage of the meal schedule since they had learned early on during their years of training under Ibiki that few people wanted to be stuck delivering food to the prisoners. So, the Chuunin assigned to kitchen duty usually snagged the first unoccupied 'volunteer' to deliver the food instead of doing it themselves.

"Once I had access to the cells, making the prisoners vanish was a piece of cake. The fact that it was mealtime for the prisoners also meant that I didn't have to worry about getting caught in the act since the prisoners wouldn't be checked on again for at least an hour when it was time to collect their trays. And, the two Chuunin that were supposed to be supervising me during my task were far too busy having sex in one of the empty cells to notice what I was up to. I really, really didn't want or need to see that, by the way."

The reactions of the adults upon hearing about that particular security breech were rather varied. The Sandaime reached up to rub at his temples as if to stave off a headache. Inoichi palmed his face and looked to be smothering what sounded suspiciously like laughter. Ibiki growled out another string of swear words coupled with a few painful sounding threats of what he would do to the individuals in question. And Kasai's body language conveyed pure annoyance.

On the other side of Tenzou, Aoba was quietly laughing again while Tenzou was wearing a put upon expression that conveyed his displeasure over the entire incident. Kojimaru was torn between commiserating with Tenzou and joining Aoba in laughing his ass off. He could see the amusement in the situation but at the same time, he knew he would not have enjoyed walking in on two people having sex. In the end, he settled on bumping his shoulder against Tenzou's shoulder in a silent sympathy.

"Do you have anything further to add to your report?" the Sandaime asked once the adults had collected themselves.

"No, I pretty much left after stumbling on those two Chuunin messing around in the unoccupied cell."

"Where are my prisoners now?" Ibiki inquired as he glowered at Tenzou.

"Technically, they're still in their cells; I tagged them with knock-out tags, sealed their food into a scroll so it wouldn't spoil, and left them and their meals in the walls."

"How…? Aren't the cell walls made up of solid concrete?" Kasai asked with a trace of confused annoyance.

"No, each wall has a wooden frame for support set in the middle of the concrete and I can travel through concrete as easily as I can travel through rocks and dirt; I just can't stay in concrete or cement for very long."

"I suppose that's something you can also do?" Kasai demanded as he turned his gaze on Kojimaru.

"Aa, if I have to, I can but I really don't like doing it."

"And the reason why I'm only just now hearing about that particular little trick of yours?"

"We told you we could pass through the walls years ago," Tenzou pointed out. "That was one of the first things we told you we could do."

Kasai was not impressed with that borderline smart-mouthed answer but he didn't bother verbalizing another complaint since Tenzou's reply had been accurate. It wasn't like it was their fault that Kasai hadn't asked them to clarify what _types_ of walls they could travel through. It should have been quite obvious that they could pass through cement and concrete in any case because some of the walls within the ANBU Headquarters were made up of cement or solid stone; that was especially true on the lower levels.

"Now that that little mystery has been cleared up, Kojimaru-kun; please give us your report," the Sandaime instructed as soon as it became clear that there were no further questions regarding Tenzou's report or their abilities.

Kojimaru automatically nodded in compliance before he began, "After Aoba let us inside, I spent my first hour and a half wandering through the building mingling with everyone else as I delivered disguised exploding paint tags to key personnel and tricked a couple of Chuunin into helping me pass out additional disguised tags to everyone else. Once I had finished that, I made my way to the file rooms and dropped all of the existing file cabinets through the floor before I made it look like I torched the public information and restricted files and that I'd stolen all of the classified files."

"I had just finished setting up my 'theft' when my 'sabotage' in the other two file rooms had been discovered and I lent a hand to help search for the culprit. I also managed to start more than a few fights until Kotetsu and Izumo began to get suspicious of me. It took me several minutes to ditch the two of them before I could change my disguise and slip out of the building unchallenged about the same time as the prisoner alarm went off. Any one I talked to who didn't question my being here was tagged with a splinter and leaf."

"What was the purpose of the exploding paint tags?" Ibiki inquired as soon as Kojimaru finished speaking. "Did you pull a prank just to cause a little misdirection?"

"Assassination," Kojimaru corrected without a trace of humor for the seeming prank. "Imagine that I'd used standard exploding tags instead of the paint tags. I may have used my Mokuton to disguise the tags as paperwork but it would not be that hard to replicate that feat by slipping a primed tag between two sheets of paper or wrapping one up in a report scroll. The amount of chakra given off by either tag prior to detonation is negligible; making them rather easy to mistake for a security seal."

"Kuso, you could have taken out the entire department and dropped the building in one fell swoop; no one escaped your paint tags," Inoichi blurted out in shock as he gestured to the splashes of red paint that decorated his pants and the red speckles that decorated the sleeve of Ibiki's favorite trench coat.

"What possessed you to do mock assassinations?" the Sandaime asked in a neutral tone.

"Ibiki-san asked us to test his department's security and we wanted to be thorough after we'd unknowingly set him up to discover the sabotage being done to the holding cells with a prank. Someone is just as likely to send an assassin after Ibiki-san or those key people that help him run this department as they are to send new people to infiltrate it; especially once word gets out that he recently did a little house cleaning. It's the same reason why we also went after the prisoners instead of just looking to 'steal' information."

"Don't pretend you didn't enjoy throwing the entire department into chaos," Kasai drawled in an exasperated tone.

"I wasn't going to," Kojimaru replied with a smirk. "It was the most fun I've had in days." The smirk slid off of his face a moment later as he added, "I actually managed to get a couple of hours of uninterrupted sleep last night thanks to all of the last minute planning and preparations."

The atmosphere in the room immediately grew heavy in response to Kojimaru's reference to his current problem with controlling his temper and the nightmares he'd been dealing with ever since the suppression seal blocking his anger at Orochimaru had been removed. The fact that none of the adults showed any signs of confusion over his reference was a clear indication that everyone present knew exactly what he was talking about and Kojimaru struggled not to curl in on himself in shame in response to so many people being aware of what he saw as his personal failures.

The feel of Tenzou's hand closing around his wrist immediately grounded Kojimaru and the troubled teen took a couple of deep breathes to center himself once more before he flashed his brother a tight smile. Tenzou smiled back at him and gave his wrist a squeeze before he let go. Aoba reached across Tenzou's back to lightly slap Kojimaru on the shoulder a split second later and Kojimaru offered their older brother a small, appreciative smile for his added support. A heartbeat later, Kojimaru remembered that Aoba had been given the next two days off and he near burst with excitement at the prospect of spending some real quality time with the older teen.

The Hokage clearing his throat put a damper on his enthusiasm as it abruptly reminded him of where he was and what he was supposed to be doing. A blush spread across his face when he returned his attention to Konoha's leader and saw the small amused smile on the man's face.

"Is there anything else any of you would like to add? No? Then I believe that I shall take my leave," the Sandaime announced as he climbed to his feet. As the Hokage passed by the three teens, he reached out and patted Kojimaru's head, Tenzou's shoulder, and Aoba's arm as he murmured, "Good work, gentlemen."

It wasn't until the door swung shut behind the man that Kojimaru realized the only reason why he'd been given a head pat was because he was the shortest of the trio; standing a head shorter than Tenzou and nearly a foot shorter than Aoba. He was half tempted to prank the Hokage in response but decided against it in the end when he realized that the best revenge would be to grow taller than the Hokage so he couldn't pat him on the head any more. Of course, in order for that to happen, his body would need to cooperate and actually grow.

Shaking off the odd silliness of the direction his thoughts had taken, Kojimaru refocused on Ibiki as the scarred Jounin moved to reclaim his desk now that the Hokage was no longer borrowing it. As he walked by the three teens, Kojimaru absently noticed something odd about Ibiki's trench coat. It only took him a couple of seconds to realize that the red paint from the paint tags wasn't the only thing marring the not quite black coat and Kojimaru was smirking at the man by the time he'd taken his seat behind the desk.

"What are you smiling about, gaki?" Ibiki gruffly demanded the moment he caught sight of the smirk on the teen's face.

"You have cat hairs on your trench coat," Kojimaru slyly pointed out.

"My brother's new cat has no sense of personal boundaries," Ibiki stoically explained in a rather stiff tone.

"So that's where that calico kitten ended up after you refused to hand her back to us the other day," Tenzou laughingly crowed as he shared a smirk with Kojimaru.

"I never said my brother's cat was a calico."

"You also didn't say it wasn't," Aoba blandly countered; suppressed laughter making his voice sound rather strangled.

Ibiki glowered at all three teens but didn't say another single word about the kitten; something that only confirmed that the intimidating man had taken said kitten home with him. Kojimaru was more than a little amused that the man who could make hardened shinobi quake in their sandals with just a look had a soft spot for small animals. And to think, Kojimaru (and both of his brothers) used to be utterly intimidated by Ibiki.

"You, go put my prisoners back where they belong," Ibiki snapped as he pointed at Tenzou when their amusement managed to get under his skin before he swung his finger at Aoba next. "You, go fix my security cameras!" His finger landed on Kojimaru last. "And you, go put my files back so I can have the individual security seals tested after your stunt. Once all three of you are finished, report to Inoichi so he can view your memories of the evaluation."

"Hai, Ibiki-san!" all three teens chorused.

Tenzou immediately sank into the floor in order to take the quickest route to the holding cells while Kojimaru chose instead to tag along after Aoba as his earlier excitement over the chance to spend some quality time with the older teen returned full force. As they stepped through the door, Kojimaru couldn't resist ribbing Ibiki one last time about the kitten he'd kept as he grinningly commented, "You know, Birdbrain, I never pegged your boss as a cat person; I was so certain he'd be more of a grumpy bear person."

The sound of an ink well shattering against the door as it closed behind them set both teens to laughing as they headed for the surveillance room to fix the cameras. And if Aoba realized that Kojimaru was purposefully procrastinating on returning the displaced filing cabinets back to where they belonged in order to put off seeing Inoichi, he wisely kept his opinion on the matter to himself. In fact, Aoba happily distracted the fifteen year old with amusing anecdotes about his coworkers to keep the younger boy from brooding while they carried out their assigned tasks together.

* * *

**Translations:** Japanese to English

Aa – yes  
Ano – um/uh/er  
Chikushou – damn/damn it  
Gaki – brat  
Hai – yes  
Kuso – swear word

* * *

**10-18-16: **_Minor edits made to chapter to fix spelling/grammar mistakes, reworded a few sections so that they made more sense, and removed unnecessary author's notes._


	38. The Vacation

**Disclaimer:** _All HP characters are the property of JKR, the WB, and respective publishing companies and all Naruto characters are the property of Masashi Kishimoto. This is nothing more than a simple FanFiction that I have written. I have made no money from this or any of the other stories I have posted on this or other sites._

**Warnings:** _Mild to moderate violence, character death, alternate universe (i.e. kiss canon goodbye), OCC behaviors and personalities, a number of original characters and obscure canon characters to flesh out family trees, random chosen last names to give a number of characters surnames, and who knows what else._

**AN:** _This story is self-beta'd; so there may be occasional grammatical or spelling errors that crop up every now and then and for those I apologize in advance._

* * *

Chapter Thirty-Eight: The Vacation

_October 27, 0295 AtD, 10:02 PM  
Houseki River/ Yubiwa Lake, Summons World_

Kojimaru watched Aoba and Tenzou both disappear in a large burst of chakra smoke as their individual summonses reversed summoned them to the Summons World. He then glanced down at the paw print on his left palm and sighed before he sliced open the pad of his right thumb, smeared his blood across black tattoo, and channeled his chakra into the paw print. A heartbeat later, Kojimaru felt himself being forcefully yanked out of reality as he was pulled into the world where all Summons Clans lived.

He appeared on the wooden watchtower that had been built overtop of Kawanari's holt three point two seconds later in a cloud of chakra smoke and immediately dropped down into a crouch when he was hit with a brief moment of vertigo that set the world reeling sideways. He really hated that feeling. And he hated the fact that he had no control over the force that snatched him from reality (not even when he was the one initiating the technique) and dropped him in a world that was so similar and yet at the same time so very different than his world. That feeling always sparked a sense of unease within him and carried with it the scent of ozone and ashes and he didn't know why.

If the memory of his fiery arrival in the Elemental Nations as a baby hadn't been lost to the pain, Kojimaru would have realized the sensation was identical to the force that had ripped him from his birth world and dropped him into the forest where Orochimaru had found him. That memory had been damaged during his transition between worlds though. The parts of the memory that hadn't been damaged in transport had then been amongst the first of the memories that his mind had sacrificed to protect his sanity from the pain he'd been forced to endure during Orochimaru's experiments.

Shaking away the feeling, Kojimaru stood back up and stared out over the heaving waves of black sea water crashing endlessly against the relentless streams of fresh water that poured forth into the sea from the river delta where river met ocean. His eyes then slipped further inland where the pale light of the half moon glittered on the brackish waters of the marshland that spread for several miles on either side of the delta. A small, half turn, and Kojimaru's eyes were snaking along the dark length of the Houseki River to where he knew the Beaver Dam and Yubiwa Lake sat.

Kojimaru cut his eyes to the left as he pushed down the relentless need he felt to find Tenzou so he could stare out over the vast forests towards where a giant oak tree towered above the trees a good sixty miles away. Thankfully, the normal discomfort he felt when separated over such a significant distance was greatly muted when they were in the summoning world; though he had no idea why. Tenzou figured it had something to do with the fact that the summoning world was an alternate dimension connection to the human world and the way the summoning world was over-saturated with chakra.

Kojimaru wasn't quite certain he really cared about the reasons for the reprieve. He also wasn't sure whether or not he liked the way that 'connection' (for lack of a better word) between him and his brother became muted when they were visiting the Otter and Beaver Clans either. The only reason he had brought the matter up to Tenzou was because Inoichi had used logic to convince him that knowing everything they could find out about the connection would be beneficial for both of them.

Pushing that project out of his mind for the moment, Kojimaru refocused his attention on the view in front of him. As he stared at the towering oak tree in the distance, he couldn't help but wonder what the Rookery (the home of the Crow and Raven Clans and the oak tree in question) was like and what Aoba thought of his summonses' home now that he was visiting it for the first time. A small smile touched the teen's lips as he thought of both his brothers and the fact that they would have the next two days to explore this world side by side.

"Are you ever going to come down from there and greet everyone or are you going to cling to the roof all night like a kitten afraid of the water, koneko?" Kawanari demanded from below Kojimaru several minutes later.

The teen didn't even have to look to know that his otter mentor was standing just outside of the entrance to the holt on the sturdy wooden deck that ran along the river bank at water level and connected the individual holts along that side of the river. A labyrinth of floating piers crisscrossed the river and doubled as floating streets for the otter city; the wooden constructs allowing one to easily travel from the left bank to the right bank without getting wet (though most of the otters actually preferred swimming over walking).

There were times when the water was too dangerous (such as when the gators got washed into the river from the marshes upstream) to enter though. During such a time, those piers allowed the entire clan to move quickly above the surface of the water in order to confront the threat before it could do any serious damage. The piers also allowed the otters move those items that would be ruined if soaked (such as food or paper) back and forth across the water without worrying about them getting wet.

Kojimaru had run over and swam beneath those piers more times than he could count over the past year and so could easily picture Kawanari scowling up at him with his hands on his hips from his position directly outside of the holt.

The green-eyed Tokubetsu Jounin let out a gusty sigh in response that mental image before he shifted over to the side of the watchtower that was furthest away from the deck and planted himself on the edge of the building so he could stare out over the ocean once more instead of answering the ornery old otter. He wasn't really in the mood for a rough and tumble greeting right now; he was far too terrified that he'd lose control and hurt (or worse, kill) one of his summonses. And Tenzou wasn't close enough at hand to snap him out of it if his anger pulled him under.

"Still as stubborn as ever, I see," Kawanari huffed just loud enough for the teen to hear as soon as it became obvious that Kojimaru would neither respond nor come down from the watchtower.

Kojimaru tensed when his mentor climbed up onto the old watchtower a moment later and promptly settled down next him but the summons merely sat silently beside him instead of trying to goad him into a spar. Seconds ticked by and soon turned into minutes as the two of them stared out over the ocean while the stars and the moon shone down on them from the heavens and still Kawanari remained silent.

It was rather surreal for the young shinobi. He couldn't recall a single time when any of the otters had ever sat so still or so silent when he was with them. It was always rowdy calls and rough play or fancy footwork and the ringing of clashing blades when he called on the otters or they called on him.

He rather liked the change; it helped to settle him and the longer the silence lasted, the more relaxed Kojimaru grew.

Nearly an hour had passed before the old otter broke the silence and instead of taking Kojimaru to task for giving him the silent treatment (as Kojimaru had half expected him to), Kawanari began to sing what sounded suspiciously like a lullaby in a surprisingly light baritone that hung on the soft sea breeze that danced around the two of them.

"_Hush now, mo stóirín  
Close your eyes and sleep  
Waltzing the waves  
Diving in the deep_

_Stars are shining bright  
The wind is on the rise  
Whispering words  
Of long lost lullabies_"

Oddly enough, the song was both soothing and uplifting as it spoke of both a plea and a promise. Without even realizing it, Kojimaru closed his eyes and softly began humming along as he got lost in the tune and the smell of brine that filled the air. By the time Kawanari had sung through the chorus for the second time, several young otters had added their voices to the song and the song swelled into the night until it almost felt like the entire world had fallen silent just so it could listen to the sweet song.

Before he even realized what was happening, Kojimaru drifted off to sleep with otters' voices filling both his ears and his dreams. He didn't even stir when Kawanari picked him up and gently lowered him down to Kawarashi so he could be tucked inside the nest where the father and son pair made their bed. The raven-haired teen would then spend the rest of the night curled between the two otters and each time his nightmares haunted his dreams, he'd hear the faint echo of their voices softly singing the lullaby's chorus until he drifted back to sleep.

"_Oh won't you come with me  
Where the moon is made of gold  
And in the morning sun  
We'll be sailing_

_Oh won't you come with me  
Where the ocean meets the sky  
And as the clouds roll by  
We'll sing the song of the sea_"*

It was the scent of freshly grilled gator meat that woke Kojimaru the next morning and he groggily pushed his way out from under a pile of woven beaver-down blankets to find himself inside Kawanari's holt. It didn't take him long to figure out that one of the otters must have carried him inside once he'd fallen asleep on the watchtower and he couldn't quite decide if he should feel indignant over being treated like a 'pup' or embarrassed over being sung to sleep. After a half a minute of indecision, he decided it didn't matter when his stomach rumbled with hunger in response to the delicious scents filling the small holt.

He'd barely swung his feet over the edge of the nest before he had a bowl of seasoned wild rice and gator meat being shoved into his hands by a grinning Kawarashi. If he had been paying a little closer attention, Kojimaru might have noticed that the otter's grin held a brittle edge to it and that his eyes radiated concern. He didn't notice though and simply murmured out a quiet 'arigatou' followed almost immediately by a whisper soft 'itadakimasu' before he dug into the food.

He'd just swallowed his last bite of breakfast some twelve minutes later when Kawanari returned to the holt and Kojimaru froze as the often cantankerous otter subjected him to an intense visual inspection. Two shakes of an otter's rudder later, the tense moment was broken when Kawanari snagged the tall quiver of hunting harpoons that Kojimaru had been given upon his adoption into the otter clan and tossed the sealed gator-skin and bamboo tube at the teen. Kojimaru deftly snagged the quiver out of the air with one hand and slipped the strap over his head and shoulder as he surrendered his dirty bowl to Kawarashi and climbed to his feet.

"It's about time you decided to haul your cranky carcass out of bed, Same no Kouji," Kawanari barked by way of greeting. "Now shake your rudder off and get a movin' or the boat's going to leave without you and if'n you make it so I have to listen to the water rat pout and complain non-stop for the next two days because you skipped out on him, I will use you for gator bait."

Kojimaru considered asking his mentor what they would be doing (aside from hunting, obviously) but decided against it when said otter didn't bother to stick around long enough to hear him out. Sighing, the teen snagged his camping pack and his utility pouch (both of which had been stripped from him after he'd fallen asleep) before he slipped on his sandals and trotted out onto the deck that lined the river bank. Kawarashi fell into step beside him two feet later and steered him towards the ocean docks where they kept the seaworthy ships as opposed to the river docks where they kept the skiffs and shallower boats used to traverse the marshes and river.

And if they were heading out to sea, then Kojimaru could expect to be hunting shark. Or rather, he, Kawanari, the six otter warriors he had trained alongside, and two other warrior crews would be on the lookout for sharks while the rest of the ship's crew fished since it was getting rather close to winter and the Holt's food stores would need to be stocked before the schools migrated south to warmer waters for the cold season. There was also a chance that they'd visit the deeper kelp beds to harvest the leaves and that meant there was a higher risk of encountering a great white shark or two.

His prediction that his otter crew (which is what he called the six young warriors that he had trained, hunted, and fought alongside most often under Kawanari's watchful eyes) would be on shark duty was fulfilled the moment they reached the ship. Kojimaru barely had time to register his nickname being bellowed by several voices before he was buried beneath a dog pile of otters. The besieged teen panicked for all of five seconds before the familiar scents of fish oil, sea salt, and wet fur that clung to his summonses, his partners, helped him to remember where he was.

Even though he had stopped panicking, Kojimaru still hesitated to roughhouse with the otters for several minutes until the weight and heat of five mammalian bodies smothering him finally prompted him to retaliate. Frozen slush and sharp splinters soon bought him enough breathing room for him to whip his crew into shape and show them who was boss. The longer the seven of them scuffled (Kawarashi had not hesitated to join in once it was clear that Kojimaru wasn't going to fold under the rough greeting), the calmer and more in control that Kojimaru felt.

It helped that no one ended up frozen solid in blocks of ice or skewered to the point where they bled to death.

By the time their group had finished messing around, Kojimaru was wearing a small smirk and his entire crew looked exceedingly pleased with themselves despite their bedraggled appearances. After that, it was far easier for Kojimaru to fall into the usual pre-journey routine that the otters went through each time they took one of the ships out to sea. The ship was inspected from bow to stern and from crow's nest to keel, the fishing nets were checked for weak spots, the lifeboats were tested for leaks, the larder was stocked with plenty of food and fresh water, and weapons were sharpened and oiled.

He and his crew were in the middle of tallying empty barrels (to hold the fish they were hoping to catch) when a huge raven the size of a covered wagon dropped lightly on the dock beside the ship while a small flock of normal sized crows took up perches in the ratlines. Seated on the large corvid's back was Aoba looking a little green around the gills after experiencing his first flight. Kojimaru laughed at his oniisan even as he envied the older teen for having a flying summons; not that he'd ever want to give up his otters – they were far cooler (and much fiercer) than he had first thought they would be.

"Hey, Birdbrain; how was the view on the way over?" Kojimaru asked as he shunted the clipboard he'd been using to keep track of his tally numbers at Kawatouu (who was the youngest otter in his crew and the 'cabin boy' to his 'captain' as well as being Kawakaze's son) while he leaned against the bulwark to smirk at his old teammate.

"Mesmerizing and far too far away from my feet, Shark Bait," Aoba retorted as he lightly pat the towering raven on the wing before climbed off of the raven's back and onto the ship's deck. "As much as I love working with the ravens and crows, I'd really prefer to keep my feet on the ground." He then offered up introductions; giving Kojimaru's ANBU code name because he was wearing his natural face. "In any case, this is Kararingo; he's my newly assigned personal summons from amongst the ravens. Kararingo meet Tora; my old teammate and annoying but lovable little brother."

"It's a pleasure to meet you, Kararingo," Kojimaru stated as he offered the large bird a respectful bow. "Behind me is my otter crew and they are, from left to right; Kawarashi, Kawaharu, Kawatsuki, Kawashio, Kawanatsu, and Kawatouu."

The large bird cawed once loudly and bobbed his head a couple of times in acknowledgment before he took off once more. Aoba watched him go with a bemused look before he dropped his gaze to Kojimaru and offered, "Sorry about that, Kararingo doesn't speak human speech, though he understands it just fine. He's also not very sociable; which makes him something of the odd one out in the Flock and one of the reasons why I ended up partnered with him."

"No worries, I'm used to dealing with weird and annoying summonses," Kojimaru replied before he deftly dodged the backhand slap that Kawanari had aimed at his head when his mentor arrived in time to hear his comment. "Careful there, fish-face, your old age is showing again and you might throw your back out if you keep swinging wide like that."

"Get back to work, koneko; the ship won't stock itself," Kawanari gruffly ordered as he gave the teen a push in the direction of his crew.

"I'll catch up with you once we set sail, Aoba-nii," Kojimaru promised as he formed a quarterstaff out of ice and used it to sweep Kawanari off of his feet before he collected his clipboard from Kawatouu and picked up from where he'd left off with the barrel tallies.

The beavers and Tenzou would turn up in a pair of trade barges shortly after the preparations had been complete and that was when Kojimaru learned that their little expedition was going to be a little larger than he'd originally thought it would be. Not only would they be fishing and harvesting the sea weeds that grew in the deeper parts of the ocean, they would be making several pit-stops at the various clan villages allied to the Beaver and Otter Clans to trade for those items they didn't catch or harvest themselves.

Kojimaru then sat back and watched as the otters hauled armfuls of harpoons, bolts of cured shark skin and gator hide, barrels of sea salt, buckets of polished shells, and chests of tools, knives, and jewelry made from teeth, shells, and coral onto the second barge. A small smile tugged at his lips as he watched Tenzou scampering about in an effort to keep a curious Bizemori and Bizekuki (the young beaver twins that Tenzou had summoned back on the day they had first signed their contracts) out of things as the goods were secured on the barge's deck.

In the interest in helping his brother out, Kojimaru conjured up a trio of snowballs that he launched into the air. The smile on his face turned into a large smirk when the falling snowballs beaned all three of his targets on the head. Tenzou sent a mock glare at him in return while the two little beaver kits let out cries of indignation before they abandoned ship in order to hunt Kojimaru down to get him back for 'icing' them. A couple of the exasperated beavers who'd been trying to work with the kits underfoot saluted Kojimaru in thanks for the offered distraction that he happily acknowledged.

It would take the otters and beavers another half an hour to finish the last minute preparations for their trip and Kojimaru and Tenzou spent that time playing with the two beavers kits and a half a dozen young otter pups that had been loitering curiously at the edge of the docks. As he listened to the laughter of the young summonses, Kojimaru couldn't help but recall the seemingly endless babysitting missions that Team Fourteen had done through the years. Those missions may have been annoying at the time but they certainly taught them how to keep energetic troublemakers out of trouble.

At the end of that half an hour, Tenzou delivered the two beaver kits back to their father while Kojimaru and his summoning partners cast off the lines, unfurled the sails, and hauled up the anchor alongside the ship's crew. Once the three vessels reached the open sea some seven minutes later, Tenzou used his Mokuton to jump ship from the barge he'd been on so he could join Kojimaru and Aoba on the otters' fishing boat. The trio soon settled themselves below deck to play cards (using polished clam shells as chips for betting) to pass the time.

As they played countless hands of poker, blackjack, and gin, Aoba regaled the two younger teens with descriptions of the Rookery and the various summonses he'd met since arriving the previous night. Tenzou had then shared with them the mock lecture he'd been given from the twins for not calling on them for a whole two months. Kojimaru only told them about his rough and tumble greeting from his otter crew when it was his turn to share. He wasn't about to give either of his brothers something else to tease him over; which is what would happen if they ever learned he'd been sung to sleep.

Once they'd finished comparing their respective receptions upon their arrival, their conversation turned to what they'd been up to over the past few months; though the details were sparse on the ground since much of what all three of them had been up to was strictly classified. Such was the life of a shinobi. Despite that little restriction, there was still plenty for the three of them to talk about; like pranks, village gossip, and the usual complaints about being forced to work with slave drivers (better known as their direct supervisors).

The three of them would have three hours just to catch up before they were called up onto the deck when their small armada of vessels stumbled upon a large school of herring. Tenzou and Aoba were soon folded into the group of crewmen that would be responsible for sorting out whatever the fishing nets hauled up while Kojimaru collected his crew and dropped overboard to join another warrior crew that was already in the water. Once in the frigid water, Kojimaru led his crew out away from the ship and circled around the outer edge of the school in order to deal with any sharks following the school.

The smaller and mostly harmless sharks were merely steered away from the nets in order to prevent them from being hauled aboard the ship while the more dangerous sharks (the ones that wouldn't hesitate to attack any of the otters if the chance arose) were either chased off or killed if they turned violent. They also needed to watch out for sailfish, dolphins, and whales; since most of them belonged to summoning clans and they needed to be careful not to trap their young in the nets lest it trigger a war between the clans.

It was a tough and tedious job that required one to remain on their constant guard because it only took a single moment of inattention to allow a shark to sneak up on you in the water. That was especially true for Kojimaru; because he didn't have a powerful tail to propel him through the water like the otters did. Nor did his ears work any where near as well as an otter's ears did under the water. Kojimaru could and did use chakra to make up for those deficiencies though.

The challenge of keeping up with the otters underwater was one that Kojimaru thrived on. One that ultimately helped him when he fought on land as well since compensating for the constant resistance the water provided helped to increase his reflexes and speed when he was out of the water. Increasing the length of time he could remain under water (courtesy of his water affinity and a nifty little trick the otters had taught him) was also a good thing since he could theoretically use that same ability to navigate through a room or area suffused with a vaporous poison or smoke.

Another side benefit of hunting underwater was the fact that Kojimaru didn't have any time to dwell on his past or wallow in self-pity over his lack of emotional control. All of his attention was on his surroundings, his partners, and his job. The normalcy of carrying out the duties assigned to him by the clan also helped to further restore his equilibrium and boost his confidence in his ability to maintain control of himself. His sessions with Inoichi had helped him too but the fact that they were so structured (and therefore rather predictable) didn't instill the same sort of confidence in himself.

That attention was currently focused on redirecting a large whale shark that was passing through. The giant plankton eating shark was harmless despite the fact that it was over eleven meters long and dwarfed Kojimaru and all of the otters he was swimming alongside. Normally, they wouldn't bother to chase the whale shark off but they couldn't afford for it to get tangled up in the fishing nets because it was far too big and too heavy for them to haul it onto the ship to untangle it and they'd loose too much time if they dropped the nets from the lines to untangle it.

There was also the very real possibility that the enormous shark would destroy the ship in its efforts to escape if it did get tangled in the nets.

After dealing with the whale shark, the eight of them ran into a pair of common thresher sharks (also called fox sharks) that were a bit of a pain to deal with because you had to watch out for both their teeth and their tails (specifically the long caudal fin which was sometimes as long as the shark's body). To deal with the troublesome sharks, the crew split up into two groups of four. Kojimaru, Kawanari, Kawatsuki, and Kawatouu formed one group and they moved to take out the larger female shark while the Kawarashi, Kawaharu, Kawashio, and Kawanatsu dealt with the smaller male shark.

Kojimaru further split up his group into two pairs. Kojimaru partnered up with Kawatouu to immobilize the shark's caudal fin while Kawanari and Kawatsuki dealt the killing blow. Like most sharks, the female thresher was fast and she wielded her elongated tail like a coach whip as she attempted to fight off Kojimaru and the otters. She thrashed viciously once Kojimaru and Kawatouu managed to pierce her tail with their harpoons from opposite sides with Kojimaru piercing the long fin near the tip and Kawatouu nailing her near the base of the tail.

The two of them gamely held onto the shafts of their harpoons that were attached to the detachable heads with strong cords of tightly woven gator hide. Blood clouded the water as the two of them swam hard in opposite directions in an attempt to limit its mobility so that Kawanari and Kawatsuki could move in to land the killing blow. An opportunity would crop up when the shark attempted to fold itself in half to snap at Kojimaru (as the weaker swimmer) and Kawanari slammed his harpoon deep into the shark's left eye while Kawatsuki shoved hers into the shark's open mouth and up through the brain.

Fight over; the four of them worked quickly to secure the shark before they turned to make certain the other half of their crew was not in trouble. They needn't have worried; the other four had already killed their shark. Both sharks would be tied together at that point and hauled up to the surface where they'd be picked up by the ship. All eight of them stuck close together to accomplish that; the blood in the water far too likely to draw any nearby predators and because they were in the open ocean, that meant more sharks.

They would luck out today; instead of a starving shark following a trail of blood, they got a pod of dolphins that had just crossed paths with the school of herring on their way home to their clan's underwater city-caves. The dolphins ended up sticking around until the otters had finished their fishing; the six playful sea summonses utterly fascinated by Kojimaru and quite willing to swim and fight alongside the shinobi and his summonses. The pod probably would have tried to drag the teen home with them if not for the fact that he was the Otter Clan's summoner.

After saying goodbye to the dolphins, the small flotilla left the herring behind and moved further south to where one of the larger kelp beds was located. It was nighttime when they reached the kelp bed and the three vessels dropped anchor for the night. On board the fishing boat, the crew was rather lively as they sang sea shanties while they finished sorting their catch and packed everything into the empty barrels. The sharks (of which there were six total – the two threshers, a hammer head, and three tiger sharks) were gutted, skinned, butchered, and packed up as well.

Kojimaru was teased mercilessly by Aoba and Tenzou when he was asked to provide ice to pack some of the fish in to keep them fresh for trade. It was not something that the otters asked him to do often but ice was a little hard for them to get since they lived so far from the mountains where it snowed year round. It was really no different than being asked to fill up a canteen with water while traveling through the desert in Kojimaru's mind; something both he and Tenzou had done on more than one mission during their time as part of Team Fourteen.

The long day of work and conjuring large amounts of ice meant that Kojimaru slept through the night undisturbed by nightmares when he finally curled up in a hammock strung up in the cargo hold with Tenzou and Aoba later that night. He'd be dragged out of said hammock bright and early… well, maybe not so bright; the sun hadn't actually crested the horizon… the next morning by Kawanari. Kojimaru retaliated by setting a trio of 'toothless' ice gators on the summons.

It was a rather lively start to the day and Kojimaru had an extra spring in his step as he made his way to the mess for breakfast.

Everyone else was up and moving with the sun and by the time the sun had fully crested the horizon, Kojimaru was back in the water with his crew. Tenzou and Aoba were both with him in the water this time; Tenzou using a chakra trick to breathe (like Kojimaru) and Aoba using an underwater breather mask (which had been lifted off of an Ame Shinobi at some point in the past) that he'd requisitioned from the T and I Dept.'s Supply Room once they'd all agreed to spend their time off in the Summoning World instead of in Konoha.

Kojimaru stuck close to both of his fellow humans this time; the three of them exploring the kelp beds with Kawanari keeping an eye on them while the rest of his crew kept watch for sharks and other predators. They chased rays, watched small schools of fishes weave in and out of the kelp stalks, collected shellfish from the ocean floor, played with a couple of harmless carpet sharks, and coaxed a moray eel out of its cave with offerings of fingerling fish just to see if they could. Around sunset, the three of them even helped the otters deal with a dozen spiny dogfish (also known as dogfish sharks) that went after Bizemori and Bizekuki.

The small sharks were normally rather shy and rarely bothered a fully grown otter (or beaver) but the two twins were small enough to be tempting targets; especially after Bizemori had nicked his hind leg on a jagged rock while playing around. Even then, it wouldn't have been that big of deal if not for the fact that spiny dogfish were one of the very few species of sharks that secreted venom from the spines on their dorsal fins. That venom was paralytic in nature and deadly in large doses because it could make the victim's heart and lungs seize up.

At the time of the attack, the twins had snuck away from their minder to explore the kelp beds because this was their first time visiting the underwater forest of leafy vines. They'd ended up near the edge of the large shelf that held the kelp bed and not far from where Kojimaru was feeding the moray eel (to keep its attention firmly on him) while Aoba and Tenzou pet the snake-like creature. It was the twins' attempts to sneak up on the three humans that had led to Bizemori slicing his leg open when he tried to squeeze between a pair of rocks to stay out of sight.

The sharks, which had been hunting small fish amongst the kelp, had converged on the twins the moment the scent of blood in the water reached them. Bizekuki's muted scream of terror had the three boys and Kawanari reacting in an instant as they rushed towards the sound. The four of them reached the two beaver kits at the same time as a dozen dogfish swarmed over the twins. Tenzou didn't hesitate to throw himself into the mob of sharks in an attempt to extract the terrified beavers.

Kojimaru followed on his heels but instead of helping his brother with the twins, he purposefully sliced his hand open in order to draw the sharks' attention away from the two beavers and Tenzou. It worked like a charm and Kojimaru spared a glance at his brother, to confirm that he got away clean with the twins with Aoba's help, before he focused all of his attention on fending off the frenzied sharks trying to take bites out of him with a pair of diving knives because he lacked the space necessary to use his harpoon once he'd been surrounded.

By that time, a number of otter warriors and a couple of the beavers had arrived on the scene. With the sharks entirely focused on the teen, the summonses were able to make short work of the dogfish. Kojimaru somehow even managed to avoid getting bit; though, he did end up with a few puncture wounds from their spines and a couple of scraped knuckles from where his hands had brushed against their rough skin. They were also lucky that all of the blood in the water hadn't attracted a larger shark, such as a great white, to their location.

As soon as the last shark had been killed, the beavers quickly gathered up the carcasses and began shifting them up to the ship to get them out of the water. The otters, in the mean time, moved to escort the rest of their expedition up to the surface now that the level of danger they were in had increased due to the sheer amount of blood in the water. Kojimaru had made a single attempt to help but found himself being dragged up to the surface by Kawanari before he could do more than turn to follow the otters back into the kelp forest.

"You have got to be the most exasperating and infuriating pup I've ever known, Same no Kouji," Kawanari declared as he hauled Kojimaru up the ladder and onto the ship's deck. "What in Leviathan's name possessed you to purposefully bait the damn sharks by spilling your blood during a shark attack?"

"I needed to distract the dogfish so Tenzou could get the twins away and that was the first thing that came to mind since I knew it was the one thing that none of the sharks would ignore."

"And if'n you'd brought a great white down on us?"

"We both know that its attention would have been focused entirely on me and I trusted you to have my back, even if you are an annoying old fossil," Kojimaru countered without missing a beat.

The old otter huffed in response to that before he turned away but the otter didn't turn fast enough to hide the pleased look in his eyes. Kojimaru was stumped at why his mentor had gone from irritated to pleased until he realized Kawanari was happy that Kojimaru had verbally acknowledged the trust that had been built between them over the past year. The green-eyed teen was then startled by the fact that he'd been working alongside the otters for a year now. It seemed like just yesterday he'd been signing their contract and preparing for that first summoning.

Shaking off his surprise over the passing time, Kojimaru went in search of his brothers to make certain they had both made it out of the water unscathed. He would find them in the ship's infirmary where Bizemori was having the small gash on his back leg stitched up. A brief inspection let Kojimaru know that both were mostly uninjured (Tenzou had a couple of bandages on his arms from where he'd been scraped by sharkskin). The twins had also come out of the ordeal in one relative piece; the worst of their injuries a mild case of poisoning from the dogfishes' venom and Bizemori's gash.

They had also had enough of a scare that they would be far less likely to wander away from their minder in the future.

The only real downside to the daring rescue was the fact that Kojimaru's stunt to distract the sharks increased the number of otters (and beavers) that would forever refer to him as 'Same no Kouji'.

Once all of the excitement was over, Tenzou and Kojimaru would spend another four hours hanging out with Aoba before he had to return to Konoha. When the time came for them to say goodbye to the older teen, Kojimaru was more than a little sad to see him go. He had missed spending time with Aoba. A small part of him still kind of resented the Hokage for splitting up their team but he mostly ignored that feeling since he'd mostly come to terms with the break up of Team Fourteen (thanks mostly to the fact that Tenzou hadn't been taken from him too).

After Aoba's crows had sent him back to the human world, Kojimaru and Tenzou submersed themselves fully into the normal day-to-day routines of their respective summoning clans. Doing so meant that they spent less time with each other but they didn't mind too much because they still spent the nights together on which ever vessel they ended up on at night. It helped that they were usually kept so busy all day long that they really didn't have time to notice the minor separation.

Roughly thirty hours after they said goodbye to Aoba, their tiny armada reached the first village on their trade route and the two teens got to meet the Seal Clan. Like the dolphins that Kojimaru had met on the first day, the seals were both friendly and playful in nature. They were also a warrior clan like the otters but they were not sailors; the seals preferred to travel through the water as opposed to over it. Their biggest enemies were killer whales and polar bears; the former of which was another summoning clan (and therefore not outright hunted) while the latter were not.

While Kojimaru and Tenzou played with the curious seal pups and kept an eye on the twins, the otters and beavers traded tools, jewelry, and fresh fish for cured bearskins, tallow (rendered from bear fat), and seaweed grog. They would then briefly abandon their boats to travel inland to meet with the Squirrel Clan where they traded polished sea shells, finely ground sea salt, dried seaweed, and bolts of woven beaver-down and gator hide for spices, edible roots, hardwood spear shafts, and those healing plants that didn't grow on or near the marshes.

Towards the end of their stay with the Squirrel Clan, Tenzou had ended up being squirrel-napped for a full two hours after the squirrels had learned he was a Mokuton user and Kojimaru had laughed himself silly because he was usually the one being kidnapped or mobbed by animals. The beavers were not quite as amused because Tenzou was their summoner and they were not about to let a bunch of bushy-tailed hooligans steal him away. War between the three clans was neatly avoided when Kojimaru instigated a snow fight to break things up.

He was also very careful not to reveal his own Mokuton lest an attempt to kidnap him goad the otters to violence since he wasn't just their summoner, he was also a member of their clan.

After leaving the Squirrel Clan, they cut north to visit the Mouse and Rat Clans but didn't bother to stop and trade with either clan because they were currently at war again. And the last thing they wanted was to get swept up in the newly renewed civil war between the two rodent clans; apparently the two clans fought at least once a decade. Once clear of that spot of trouble, they headed back to the coast where they would spend one last night with the seals before they boarded the ships and headed home.

Kojimaru and Tenzou would have to miss out on the return journey north though, as they only had four days left of their two week vacation and they had commitments they couldn't get out of for three of those days. On top of that, Kojimaru had an appointment with Inoichi that he didn't dare avoid if he wanted to remain on active duty once their vacation was over. In light of their rapidly approaching departure, their last night with the otters and beavers was celebrated with a huge feast that the seals happily hosted.

There was plenty of singing, dancing, and drinking to be had that night with a little brawling and pranking thrown in on the side. It was loud and boisterous and fun and there was no time for brooding. In other words, it was the perfect end to the trip and an even better distraction to keep Kojimaru from worrying about what would happen once they returned to the human world.

First thing the next morning, right after a rough and tumble spar with Kawanari (since Kojimaru had skipped out on his usual greeting when he first arrived), both teens were sent back to Konoha. Seeing that he had several hours to kill before his appointment with Inoichi, Kojimaru finally gathered up his courage to go see his godson now that he was no longer quite so worried about losing control of himself around the three year old. Shikaku loudly complained about being disturbed before noon but Shikamaru was thrilled to finally spend time with his daifu.

He was especially thrilled when he learned that Kojimaru had several new and exciting stories to tell him. The story about Tenzou being squirrel-napped was soon given the honor of being Shikamaru's new favorite.

Tenzou was not impressed.

* * *

**Translations:** Japanese to English

Arigatou – thank you  
Itadakimasu – an expression of gratitude usually offered before one eats (similar to saying bon appétit)  
Bizekuki – twin sister of Bizemori; bizebaze (beaver) + kuki (stem)  
Bizekuro – seventh son of Bizezuumi, Journeyman Gardener; bizebaze (beaver) + kuro (black)  
Bizemori – twin brother of Bizekuki; bizebaze (beaver) + mori (forest)  
Daifu – godfather  
Kararingo – Male Raven (large as a covered wagon &amp; Aoba's ride); Karasu (crow) + ringo (apple)  
Kawaharu – female otter (journeyman healer/apprentice warrior); kawauso (river otter) + haru (spring)  
Kawakaze – Chief of the Otter Clan; kawauso (river otter) + kaze (wind) [Toumoku – chief/head/leader]  
Kawanari – one-eyed otter (Kojimaru's mentor); kawauso (river otter) + kaminari (thunder)  
Kawanatsu – male otter (apprentice warrior); kawauso (river otter) + natsu (summer)  
Kawarashi – Kawanari's son (journeyman warrior); kawauso (river otter) + arashi (storm)  
Kawashio – male otter (apprentice warrior); kawauso (river otter) + shio/ushio (tide/current/salt water)  
Kawatsuki – female otter (journeyman warrior); kawauso (river otter) + tsuki (moon)  
Kawatouu – male otter (apprentice warrior &amp; otter chief's son); kawauso (river otter) + touu (winter rain/freezing rain)  
Same no Kouji – Shark Bait

**Translations:** Irish/Gaelic to English

Mo stóirín (pronounced as mu store-een) – my little darling

**Notes: **

* Lyrics are from 'Song of the Sea (Lullaby)' by Nolwenn Leroy and they are from the animated movie Song of the Sea

Spiny dogfish venom – I'm not certain of exactly what kind of venom the dogfish sharks produce since the only information I could find on it was that it was mildly harmful to humans. So I chose to make it paralytic to allow the dogfish to stun their prey or an enemy.

**Nautical Definitions:**

Bow – refers to the front part of the ship and is also sometimes called the prow  
Bulwarks – the part of the ship's side that extends above the level of the weather deck or main deck  
Crow's nest – an alternate name for the masthead which is a platform near the top of the mainmast on which a lookout will sit in order to get the best view  
Keel – a structural element that sometimes resembles a fin and protrudes below a boat along the central line  
Mess – also called the mess deck or mess hall; the place where the crew eats and sometimes sleeps  
Ratlines – permanent rope ladders that run from the bulwarks to the top of the masts that allow the crew to easily access the topmasts and yards; they usually look much like thick, wide weave nets  
Stern – the rear or back end of the ship

**Kojimaru's Otter Crew:**

Kojimaru – (Summoner) Captain  
Kawanari – (one-eyed otter) Kojimaru's Otter Mentor  
Kawarashi – (Kawanari's son) First Mate (second in command)  
Kawaharu – (female otter) Second Mate/Ship's Doctor/Healer (third in command)  
Kawatsuki – (female otter) Boatswain (also called a bosun; a non-commissioned officer responsible for the sails, ropes, rigging and boats on a ship who issues 'piped' commands to seamen)  
Kawanatsu – (male otter) Crewman  
Kawashio – (male otter) Crewman  
Kawatouu – (youngest warrior in crew, Kawakaze's son) Cabin Boy (attendant/go-for)

* * *

**10-18-16: **_Fixed a few spelling/grammar mistakes, added and cleaned up a few descriptions adding at least 450 words to the original chapter, and removed unnecessary author's notes._


	39. The Reflections

**Disclaimer:** _All HP characters are the property of JKR, the WB, and respective publishing companies and all Naruto characters are the property of Masashi Kishimoto. This is nothing more than a simple FanFiction that I have written. I have made no money from this or any of the other stories I have posted on this or other sites._

**Warnings:** _Mild to moderate violence, character death, alternate universe (i.e. kiss canon goodbye), OCC behaviors and personalities, a number of original characters and obscure canon characters to flesh out family trees, random chosen last names to give a number of characters surnames, and who knows what else._

**AN:** _This story is self-beta'd; so there may be occasional grammatical or spelling errors that crop up every now and then and for those I apologize in advance._

* * *

Chapter Thirty-Nine: The Reflections

_November 03, 0295 AtD, 6:51 AM  
Houseki River/ Yubiwa Lake, Summons World_

Kawanari watched the chakra smoke dissipate from his summoner's departure with a fond grin; the little koneko had grown on him over the past year. The grin soon morphed into a small frown as he recalled the troubled state Tora (which is how he thought of the pup when he wore his natural face or the tiger mask – despite the fact that he rarely ever addressed the boy as such) had arrived in on that first night. Over the past thirteen months, he could count on one paw the number of times he'd been subjected to the silent treatment from the gaki but not once had he ever ignored him until his arrival the other night. Nor had he ever witnessed the boy being tormented by nightmares in the past.

A small smirk curled his lips a few seconds later as he recalled the way he'd sung the human to sleep. As troubling as his uncharacteristic behavior had been, it was always amusing when the young shinobi acted like a newborn pup.

Far less amusing was the gaki's tendency to recklessly dangle himself in front of hungry sharks like a baited fishing hook to protect another. He didn't know if Tora's lack of self-preservation was due to that unbelievable healing ability of his or if that was just his nature but he certainly did not enjoy watching his summoner serve himself up as a shark snack without a second thought. Of course, the results of his little stunts speak for themselves; he'd saved more than one otter's (and more than one beaver's) life with his selfless actions on numerous occasions through the past year.

At the same time, Kawanari feared that that same selflessness would one day see their young summoner being taken from their clan by death. Most of the clans within the summons world saw summoners as precious treasures; that was especially true of the smaller clans like the Otters and Beavers. Summoners were meant to strengthen the clan and to allow them access to the human world. Their chakra strengthened the clan. The partnerships that developed between summonses and their summoners also strengthened the clan.

The stronger that partnership, the stronger and smarter the clan grew as the summoner shared far more of their chakra with the clan than they would through a lesser partnership.

The Otters' partnership with their young summoner had started out strong and only grown stronger through the passing months. The gaki was respectful (most of the time) and more than willing to meet them halfway when it came to 'giving' to the partnership they shared. The fact that the teen had larger than normal chakra reserves meant that there were no limits to which member of the clan Tora could summon and that he was more than capable of summoning multiple partners at a time. A side benefit to those large reserves was the fact that it provided the clan with more than twice the amount of chakra their previous summoner had allotted to the clan.

Their summoner also didn't do things by halves when it came to training with the young otters that Kawanari had hand picked to be part of the boy's main crew. In the beginning, there had been some doubt that Tora would call on them often enough for him to truly integrate himself into his crew (Kawanari had not missed the teen's disquiet when it came to the token sacrifice of blood that was required to summon them). However, his fears had been unfounded as while Tora might dislike spilling his blood to call them, he never hesitated to do so to fulfill his duties as their summoner.

Adding to the normal bonds that develop between summoner and summons was the strange draw that all animals felt towards Tora to a degree. The first time he'd been in Tora's presence, it had been fairly easy for him to ignore the gentle but persistent tug on his senses (mostly because he'd been pulled into the human world for the first time in decades). Over time, that gentle pull had strengthened until Kawanari had found himself unconsciously claiming the gaki as his pup. He had also begun to feel decades younger in the boy's presence around the same time.

Kawanari still remembered the shocked expression that his chief had worn when he'd petitioned Kawakaze for permission to adopt Tora into the clan. It was fairly rare for any summoning clan to claim a human as family (though it was rumored that the Toad Clan had adopted at least two of their summoners). Few humans could set aside their human nature long enough to understand their summonses well enough to embrace their summoning clan's animal nature long enough to develop a familial bond.

Tora had shed his humanity like most humans had shed their clothes each time he set foot in the summoning realm. Oh, he never fully forgot that he was human but he did not cling to his human nature as tightly as the other humans that Kawanari had interacted with had. The green-eyed teen had embraced the life of an otter without any hesitation and without an ulterior motive. It was that willingness that had seen the young shinobi forging a deep bond with the entire otter clan but most especially with Kawanari's small family of two.

And their clan had flourished as a result of that bond.

It was the depth and strength of that bond (a bond that went both ways) that allowed Kawanari to read his human pup as easily as if had been his own flesh and blood. And the pup that had shown up on his holt a week ago was a far different pup than the one he'd watched grow over the past year. Oh, the two were one and the same (of that there had been no doubt – the twisted taint that clung to Tora's chakra was proof enough of that) but at the same time there had been little resemblance between the two.

There had been a fragility to the boy that hadn't been there in the past.

For a brief moment, he'd even feared that the teen would buckle and break under the normal rough and tumble greeting that his crew had given him the day they had set sail only for his fears to be allayed when the boy had risen up to fight back and remind the otters in his crew that he was the one in charge.

Tora had seemingly bounced back to his normal self after that but Kawanari had been unable to forget the brittleness he had seen in the teen and he had kept a close eye on his apprentice during the next forty-eight hours. When the reckless idiot had sliced his hand open during the shark attack on the twins, he feared that the gaki had taken a suicidal turn. He had then been completely caught off guard instead when Tora had cited his absolute trust and faith in Kawanari's and the otters' abilities to protect him while he in turn protected the clan by keeping the sharks entirely focused on him.

Kawanari had been more than a little pleased to finally have a verbal confirmation of the unparalleled bond their clan shared with their summoner from their summoner's mouth. He was certain that Kawakaze-toumoku would be pleased with their summoner's acknowledgment as well.

The pleasure that confirmation had brought him didn't erase the concern he felt for Tora though. He also didn't like the fact that he didn't even know what had caused the drastic shift in his summoner's behavior. Tora was as tight lipped as usual about what was bothering him and the water rat hadn't shed any light on the matter; mostly because Tora's self-claimed brother had stuck to Tora's side like a limpet when the two teens weren't working. He at least knew it wasn't something he or another summons had done.

Tora was never shy about letting those who annoyed him know they had annoyed him.

And he hadn't played any retaliatory pranks (which were far more humiliating than the every day pranks he played) on anyone in the clan. So, that meant that it was something that had happened to the gaki while he'd been in the human world. That wasn't enough information for Kawanari to determine _what_ had happened to his summoner though. A small scowl soon slipped onto the aged otter's face as he recalled the day he'd been introduced to Tora's little Neko-chan and the pup's response to the warning he'd given the human about not getting burned.

"_I've already been burned and it wasn't by a bijuu. Humans are by far the cruelest beings that walk this earth."_

Even a brainless puffer fish could read between the lines of those two little statements and realize that Tora had been harmed by another human or possibly many humans. Kawanari wasn't exactly surprised by that revelation; he'd spent enough time in the human world throughout his lifetime to know that humans were, at times, cruel to each other and to the many ordinary creatures that shared their world. That's not to say animals couldn't be cruel as well; cats will play with their prey before they eat them, after all.

Human cruelty was not driven by animalistic instincts though.

The knowledge that some human had dared harm his human pup bothered Kawanari far more than he let on and far more than it would have in the past if it had been any other summoner outside of Tora. He didn't know if that was because he'd claimed Tora as his pup or if it was because of the strong bond between the clan and their summoner though. It could also simply be the fact that Tora _was_ a pup despite the fact that he behaved like an adult (for the most part). If Kawanari had even the smallest inkling of which human had harmed his pup, he'd gladly express his displeasure on the bottom feeder.

As it was, Tora had never once given him any hint as to _who_ it was that had hurt him or when it had happened. The mammalian warrior suspected it was something that had happened before Tora signed the Otter's Contract; if only because the boy hadn't exhibited any abrupt mood swings or unexplained injuries over the past year (not counting his behavior upon his arrival a week ago). And Tora had not offered the otters any insight into his past outside of revealing that he was an orphan that lived two separate lives.

Kawanari had not pressured the mercurial teen on that matter but maybe it was time that he changed that.

He would have to be very careful in how fast and how hard he pushed the gaki; if only to avoid breaking his pup's trust in him and the clan. He also had no desire to cause Tora any further pain. If he wanted to help his human pup, he needed to know what had happened to him in the past _and_ what it was that had happened to him between his arrival in the summoning world and the last time he'd been summoned to the human world. Once he made the decision to get to the bottom of things, Kawanari jumped ship in order to corner Bizekuro on the beavers' barge for information.

He would need to find out what the beavers had learned from their summoner in order get a general idea of what questions would be best to ask koneko-chan the next time he saw the pup. Not that he was expecting the beavers to pass on any personal details about the water rat; he knew better than to ask another summons to break the trust of their summoner. All he wanted to know was if Kuma had been more open about their shared past than Tora and if the other boy had demonstrated any drastic changes in behavior immediately upon his arrival.

The old otter would come face to face with his target the moment he pulled himself up over the bulwark of the barge and he gave the younger beaver a smirk right before he shook the saltwater from his hide.

"Ah! You rotten sea dog, you! You've been spending too much time with that human whelp of yours if you're taking to pulling stunts like that," Bizekuro complained good-naturedly in response to being showered with sea water.

"Oh, don't get your tail in a knot; it's just a little water," Kawanari countered with a trace of exasperation over the beaver's dramatics.

"It's not just a little water; it was _salt_ water! _You_ might not mind walking around encrusted with brine all the time but I'll have you know, it's a right pain to keep the salt out of my fur to keep me from looking as old as the likes of you!"

Kawanari snorted in smug amusement over the beaver's rant. Apparently, he wasn't the only creature that had picked up a few of his summoner's quirks. He'd heard Kuma mutter similar such complaints to his brother under his breath. It was good to know that the Beaver Clan's bond with their new summoner was strong; even if it was not quite as strong as the one the Otter Clan had with Tora. The biggest reason for that was due to the fact that Kuma didn't quite have as much chakra as his brother. Another reason was that Kuma hadn't officially been adopted into the Beaver Clan.

Though, he knew that Bizekoeda's twin pups had unofficially adopted the boy; so, it probably wouldn't be too long before their closest allies formally claimed the water rat. Those two rapscallions absolutely adored their summoner and to a lesser extent, his brother (the twins hadn't fully forgiven Tora for not signing their contract too).

And the last reason why the Beaver Clan's bond with their summoner wasn't as strong as the Otter Clan's bond with theirs was due to the fact that Kuma's inner nature didn't draw their attention the same way Tora's did. Kawanari hadn't yet figured out why his human pup attracted animals the way he did but he suspected that it had something to do with Tora's corrupted chakra and the elemental nature of his two Kekkei Genkai – that was especially true of his Mokuton. Kuma's Mokuton also made him rather attractive to various forest dwelling creatures but not to the extent that he drew them to him like flies to honey in the same way as Tora did.

It was also possible that the answers to that particular question might lie in Same no Kouji's past and it was that possibility that had Kawanari refocusing on the beaver in front of him as he asked, "Are you done whining like a pup, Bizekuro? I didn't jump ships just to hear you complain about a little salt in your fur."

"If you didn't want to hear me complain, you shouldn't have sunk to playing childish tricks like a fresh kit," Bizekuro retorted as he finished rinsing the salt from his hide using the moisture he had pulled from the air with a minor jutsu.

"Careful there, pup; you're almost starting to sound like a boring old stick in the mud."

Bizekuro grumbled under his breath for a moment in response to Kawanari's retort before he asked, "So, what was so important that you had to jump ships while we were still moving?"

"I need to know if your water rat has told you anything of his past," Kawanari stated in a no-nonsense tone. "I'm not asking for any details that he trusted the Beaver Clan to keep to themselves; I'm mostly just looking to find out if he'd opened up to you or one of the others. I also wanted to know if he displayed any drastic changes in behavior or personality when he first arrived a week ago."

"Tenzou had warned us that you might turn to us (and through us, to him) for information when we first pulled him through last week," Bizekuro informed him as he gestured for Kawanari to follow him below deck.

"Did he now? Did he seem upset by the inevitability of such an action from the otters?"

"No, quite the opposite; he came right out and told me to seek you out the first chance I got after they left if you didn't come to us first. Tenzou was most concerned about the risks you and your otters might face if one of you accidentally triggered Same no Kouji's temper when he wasn't around. In fact, he gave me leave to answer all of your questions and share everything he's shared with us about his and his brother's shared past since he knew his brother was unlikely to share it himself. The only stipulation he gave me was that I only share that information with you because you're family to the little koneko no yuki."

"That was… not what I expected," Kawanari murmured as the two of them reached Bizekuro's private berth.

"I wasn't surprised; those two are close and would do anything to protect one another," Bizekuro absently remarked as he dug out a jug of seaweed grog from the wooden chest that sat beneath his hammock. He then passed the jug of distilled spirits to Kawanari as he added, "Here, you're gonna need that more than I will; our summoners' past does not make for a pretty tale."

Kawanari accepted the jug without protest; he'd not expected a happy tale. Pups didn't get 'burned' in happy tales. And Tora had claimed to have been 'burned' by another human. He uncorked the jug and took a deep pull from its mouth a moment later before he sat back and waited for Bizekuro to spin the tale of their summoners' past.

"It all starts with the Snake Clan's summoner, Orochimaru," Bizekuro began the moment he had Kawanari's complete attention; his voice dropping until he was speaking halfway between a whisper and his normal speaking voice and the one-eyed otter couldn't help but lean closer in order to better hear him.

Kawanari felt a knot of dread form in his stomach the moment his companion mentioned the Snake Clan; the legless summonses were not a pleasant bunch, though there were a few (very few) decent individuals in the clan. Their boss, Manda, was not one of them and there'd been numerous rumors through the past decade or two that implied their summoner was cut of the same bark as the vicious ruler of the Snake Clan. The Snake Clan was also one of the few summoning clans that the otters, as a whole, had no wish to go up against because they were amongst the oldest and strongest summoning clans in existence.

The old otter had no time to really think about the possibility that his clan might one day have to face the snakes in a battle in defense of their summoner if the snake summoner attacked their summoner due to Bizekuro continuing on despite the small bomb he'd just dropped on Kawanari, "The man collected dozens of helpless, newly orphaned human kits and used them in foul experiments. Both of our summoners were amongst the kits taken…"

One jug of seaweed grog had not be enough to get Kawanari through the entire story and by the time Bizekuro had finished weaving the second-hand tale (and he'd finished off his third jug of grog), the old otter wished he'd never come searching for answers.

At the same time, he also felt a fierce pride for his little human pup; the young warrior was far stronger than he had originally believed him to be. He had to be to have survived all he had been forced to endure and _still_ retain a measure of innocence and purity. Beneath his pride there was also a burning desire to ensure that his koneko continued to stand strong; he would not allow anyone to break their summoner.

He'd even willingly walk into the jaws of Manda with his swords drawn to protect _his_ pup.

* * *

_November 03, 0295 AtD, 1:42 PM  
Konohagakure no Sato, Hi no Kuni_

Inoichi signed the report in front of him with a flourish before he set it aside on the pile of completed paperwork that he'd spent the last hour and a half working on. He then glanced up at the clock to check the time and noted that he only had eighteen minutes until his first appointment of the afternoon. Well, technically, it was his only appointment that had been scheduled for that afternoon. He'd purposefully blocked out his last three hours of today's shift in order to ensure that he had more than enough time to deal with the assessment he would be handling that afternoon.

Normally, he'd only need between fifteen and thirty minutes to perform an assessment but the individual he would be assessing that afternoon was not exactly what one would call normal.

Though, truth be told, few shinobi could be considered 'normal' by civilian standards.

However, Kojimaru's uniqueness (and to a lesser extent, Tenzou's uniqueness) stood out rather sharply simply because of all the tampering that Orochimaru had done.

Inoichi turned rather pensive as he wondered how the teen had fared over the past week. He had been hesitant to let the teen take off to the summoning world for a week virtually unsupervised but had not actually stopped him from going simply because spending some time away from the village without the pressure of being on a high priority (or high risk) mission would be good for him. The fact that Tenzou was also going to be there had made it even easier for him to allow the teen to go; since he knew that Tenzou was more than capable of keeping Kojimaru under control if he lost his temper.

And it wasn't like Kojimaru lacked all control at the moment; the kid could keep himself in check most of the time.

It was only when Orochimaru's name was mentioned that he lost control while he was conscious.

Or during his nightmares.

The nightmares were the worst in Inoichi's opinion. The ones he'd witnessed during the handful of days that Kojimaru had stayed at his house over a week ago had been terrible. Inoichi hadn't gotten any rest those four nights and the green-eyed Tokubetsu Jounin had gotten even less. Sure, the kid had closed his eyes and slept but that hadn't equated to actual rest. How could it when the kid had been haunted by nightmarish memories practically every time he closed his eyes?

Glancing up at the clock again, Inoichi sighed when he noticed he still had another seventeen minutes until Kojimaru was due to arrive for his appointment. He was feeling rather anxious to find out how well the teen had handled being around his summonses and if he'd had troubled keeping his temper in check over the past week. Inoichi knew from experience that Kojimaru's main summons was an ornery old otter that tended to push his buttons at the drop of a kunai and the chances that the one-eyed otter had pushed Kojimaru too far were fairly high as a result.

Aoba's report from five days ago had been mostly positive in nature but a lot could happen in five days. That wasn't even touching on the one glaring negative point that the report had contained; Kojimaru's willingness to set himself up as bait during a shark attack. Aoba didn't think the move had been suicidal in nature (since he had only done it to draw the sharks away from the 'baby' summonses that had been attacked) but he had been slightly disturbed by the reckless move.

Of course, that might have had more to do with the way the sharks reacted to Kojimaru's blood in the water with frenzied violence than Kojimaru putting himself at risk to protect the two young beavers.

He also wanted to know if Kojimaru was still having trouble with nightmares; Aoba had told him that Kojimaru hadn't had any during the two nights he'd been there but that didn't mean that he hadn't had any after Aoba had left. Right now, Kojimaru's healing ability helped him compensate for his troubled nights but the longer he went without proper rest, the higher the chances were that the lack of sleep would start affecting the teen's mind. There was also the risk that a lack of sleep would eventually start affecting him physically at some point if it continued for a significant period of time; his healing ability did have limits, even if it didn't seem like it at times.

Shaking his head to clear his head, Inoichi gathered up his unfinished paperwork and tucked it inside of his desk. He then gathered up his finished reports and the stack of shinobi files he'd been updating and reviewing and headed out of his office to hand in his reports and put away the files. Those two tasks helped him kill another ten minutes and as soon as he slid the last file into its proper place, Inoichi headed for the lobby to wait for Kojimaru (part of him hoping that the younger shinobi would turn up a few minutes early like he normally did).

He was in luck, he'd barely set foot in the lobby when the front door opened to spill a laughing Kojimaru and Tenzou into the building. Both teens appeared to be far more relaxed than they had when he'd last seen them. The fact that they had their disguise seals active made Inoichi glad that he hadn't invited Kakashi to sit in on Kojimaru's assessment since he knew the artificial redhead wasn't yet ready to reveal his identity to the ANBU Captain. Inoichi suspected it would be months, possibly years, before Kojimaru trusted Kakashi enough to allow the man to know who he was outside of the mask.

And while it was a shinobi's nature to be mistrusting in general, trust between teammates was an absolute must if you wanted to come home alive at the end of a mission.

That was especially true for those that were inducted into ANBU; simply because they were consistently assigned to the riskiest missions and you _had_ to trust that your teammates both knew what they were doing _and_ that they would watch your back. The best ANBU Squads were those that were made up of individuals that saw one another as family because they watched out for each other and pushed each other to be and do their best. It took time and effort for a shinobi to place that level of trust in another though.

Unfortunately, time was a luxury that wasn't always available in the line of their work.

Pushing his mental ramblings out of his mind for the moment, Inoichi stepped into Kojimaru's direct line of sight. The currently blue eyed teen tensed the moment his eyes landed on the blond before he seemed to sag in on himself and for a moment, it almost looked like Kojimaru had aged decades over a span of mere heartbeats. Inoichi would have been worried about that reaction if not for the fact that it was pretty the same reaction Kojimaru always had when he was required to meet with him for an evaluation.

Tenzou lightly bumped shoulders with the now despondent teen and the shorter boy perked up a bit and nudged his self-claimed brother back. The two of them then held one of their little silent conversations with but a glance before they returned their attention to Inoichi and smirked at him. Inoichi wondered, briefly, who they had pranked or were planning to prank before he decided that he really didn't want to know. He also made a mental note to keep an eye on the two troublemakers while they were in the building lest he end up caught in one of their pranks.

"Good afternoon, boys," Inoichi greeted once the boys had given him their full attention.

"Konnichiwa, Inoichi-oji," the two of them crowed in unison; though Kojimaru's voice was somewhat quiet and subdued when compared to Tenzou's.

"Did the two of you enjoy your vacation?" Inoichi fished as he gestured for the two teens to follow him.

"Mostly," Tenzou muttered in an annoyed tone while Kojimaru automatically started laughing again and Inoichi did a double take; he would have expected their actions to be reversed given the current situation with Kojimaru.

"Oh…?" Inoichi prompted when Tenzou scowled at the redhead and socked him on the arm.

"Tenzou got squirrel-napped," Kojimaru revealed around another flurry of half smothered snickers.

"S'not funny."

"Pfft… yes it is; that's the kind of stuff that usually happens to me. It was so nice to be on the sidelines for once!"

"No, it's not; the beavers were all ready to start a war over that."

"But they didn't," Kojimaru pointed out in a smug tone that Inoichi interpreted to mean that Kojimaru had done something to defuse the situation between the Squirrel Clan and the Beaver Clan.

"You still didn't have to turn it into a story for your godson."

"Yes, I did! Didn't you see the look on his face? He loved that story!"

Tenzou grumbled some more but Inoichi could tell the teen wasn't really all that mad at Kojimaru and Inoichi smiled to himself over their antics. The fact that Kojimaru was openly teasing Tenzou and that he'd gone to see Shikamaru eased a good deal of his concern about the artificial redhead's current state of mind. He knew that Kojimaru had refused to visit the Nara Estate after he'd had his seal altered prior to visiting the summoning world; the Tokubetsu Jounin had feared he would hurt little Shikamaru.

He had tried to avoid Ino while he was staying with Inoichi those first few days too but his daughter was just stubborn enough to hunt him down each chance she got; few though those chances had been at the time. Inoichi had made certain that his daughter hadn't snuck into the guest room during the night lest she end up getting hurt during one of Kojimaru's nightmares. Part of that involved sending his wife and daughter down the hall to his parents' apartment each night in case things got out of hand; which they had.

Not that he'd let the gaki know that; he'd needed to test Kojimaru's self control at the time and make certain that he'd put in the effort to keep what little control he'd had at the time.

It was a bit underhanded of him to use Kojimaru's affection for his wife and daughter that way but he _was_ a shinobi; manipulation was bred into his very bones. Quite literally in his case too. The entire Yamanaka Clan was a clan full of manipulators due to the secret techniques and accompanying skills that they learned on their parents' knees from the moment they could walk. Most of the village would actually fear the Yamanaka Clan if they knew even half of the things members of his clan were capable of doing.

The only reason that they weren't feared, aside from the fact that few people outside of the shinobi force knew what they were capable of doing and that most of his clan was scattered about the village (and therefore not recognized as members of the clan), was due to the Akimichi and Nara Clans keeping them in check. The Akimichi Clan functioned as their conscience (due to their genial nature and strong moral compass) and the Nara Clan acted as their auditors (due to their above average intelligence and love of intrigue).

In return for their help in keeping the Yamanaka Clan from stepping over the line, the Yamanaka Clan in turn acted as the voice of reason for the other two clans. Their job was to defuse the feared Akimichi temper when some fool managed to rile the normally amiable individuals of that clan and to reign in the inquisitive nature of the Nara and prevent their egos from getting out of hand just because they were smarter than the average shinobi. The fact that all three clans policed each other in such a fashion kept all three of them from getting caught up in the same trap that the Hyuuga and the Uchiha had fallen into; that of arrogant superiority.

Those two clans would never accept another clan 'policing' their actions for any reason.

In any case, Inoichi's manipulations of Kojimaru had not been at all malicious and had been intended to help the gaki manage his anger and deal with his memories of being experimented on rather than to take advantage of the teen. It was only the fact that Kojimaru trusted him as much as he did that the gaki had allowed himself to be manipulated in such a fashion. And Inoichi had been very careful not to abuse that trust with his manipulations lest he break it completely.

"Go ahead and make yourself comfortable, Kojimaru," Inoichi instructed as he unlocked his office door and held it open so that the two teens could step inside first. "I need to view your memories of the past week before I make any attempts to assess your current mental and emotional state."

The teen wrinkled his nose in distaste over the order but silently complied without offering up a verbal protest or token complaint; the lack of hesitation a potential indication that Kojimaru had not lost control of himself or his emotions during his short stent in the summoning world.

* * *

**Translations:** Japanese to English

Koneko no yuki – snow kitten  
Konnichiwa – hello, good afternoon

* * *

**10-18-16: **_Minor edits made to chapter to fix spelling/grammar mistakes and removed unnecessary author's notes._


	40. The Gauntlet

**Disclaimer:** _All HP characters are the property of JKR, the WB, and respective publishing companies and all Naruto characters are the property of Masashi Kishimoto. This is nothing more than a simple FanFiction that I have written. I have made no money from this or any of the other stories I have posted on this or other sites._

**Warnings:** _Mild to moderate violence, character death, alternate universe (i.e. kiss canon goodbye), OCC behaviors and personalities, a number of original characters and obscure canon characters to flesh out family trees, random chosen last names to give a number of characters surnames, and who knows what else._

**AN:** _This story is self-beta'd; so there may be occasional grammatical or spelling errors that crop up every now and then and for those I apologize in advance._

* * *

Chapter Forty: The Gauntlet

_November 05, 0295 AtD, 5:42 AM  
Konohagakure no Sato, Hi no Kuni_

Kakashi silently reviewed and compared the two evaluations he'd conducted on his newest squad members as he padded through the halls of ANBU Headquarters. Or rather, he reviewed his _attempts_ to evaluate the two teens. He'd had a far harder time trying to pick them out from amongst the workers that were actually assigned to Ibiki's department than he'd originally expected to based on what he knew of their skills. They had blended in exceptionally well. So well, in fact, that he had only been able to spot them in his memories _after_ he'd been handed a copy of the written reports on the security tests.

The only reason why his pride wasn't currently stinging from his failure to recognize the teens was because they in turn had not realized he'd been present during both training exercises.

Well, that and the fact that no one else had caught the two during their little incursions either.

He would have been upset with himself if a mere Chuunin had been able to catch the two when he had not.

Kakashi was mostly unsurprised by the skills the two younger teens had displayed during their little jaunts through the T and I Dept.; they had survived living on the streets of Kumo for five weeks without getting caught, after all. The two pranksters had turned the entire department inside out and upside down both times they'd broken in to test the security measures that were in place. Watching the stoic (and often sadistic) Morino Ibiki pull his non-existent hair out and snap at everyone had been rather entertaining both times too.

A slight grin curled the corners of Kakashi's mouth up as he recalled the chaos that had been sewn; his rookies would have made brilliant Saboteurs if they hadn't been pushed into the Hunter Division.

The first test had seen the two of them slip into the building through trickery before they 'assassinated' every single shinobi in the building, 'destroyed' the public and restricted files, 'stole' the classified files, and 'liberated' all of the prisoners. And aside from hiding their 'targets', they hadn't used their Kekkei Genkai to pull off their little stunt. Even more impressive had been the way they'd 'kidnapped' and 'impersonated' various members of the staff the second time in order to 'hit' the same targets again and done it right under Ibiki's nose without getting caught.

On the other hand, he had been more than a little surprised that Tora had not slipped up once during either exercise. The silver-haired teen had fully expected someone to say something that would trigger the green-eyed Tokubetsu Jounin's temper by accident. The sheer number of shinobi employed within the T and I Dept. (which was only a small division within the village's Intelligence Dept.) and the amount of time he'd spent wandering through the building (both times) would have increased the chances that _some_one would have said or done something to piss the teen off.

He just didn't know if it had been sheer luck that had seen him get through without an incident or if the teen had actually been able to restrain himself in order to get the 'mission' done. Of course, he also needed to consider the fact that there was only one real 'trigger' that he knew of based upon what little he'd learned from Inoichi and Kasai; Orochimaru's name. And few people spoke of the traitor nowadays since it had been so long since he'd been chased out of the village.

A frown worked its way onto Kakashi's face as he considered the vulnerability that having such a trigger word coupled with the complete and total loss of control when exposed to said trigger word.

Kakashi's first inclination was to desensitize Tora to his trigger but he suspected that Inoichi would string him up by his balls if he should attempt to do so without his express permission. He hadn't really thought the Yamanaka Clan Head had been all that protective of the gaki the first time he'd seen them interacting but the defensiveness the blond had displayed when Kakashi first brought up Tora's mental stability (or lack thereof) had shown him otherwise. Come to think of it, the Nara Clan Head had also been rather invested in Tora's health as well.

The young captain wondered if that was an indication that those two clans had had a hand in raising the two teens. He distinctly recalled Tora stating that he still spent time on the Nara Estate and if he was close to the Nara Clan, then it stood to reason that he would have interacted with both the Akimichi and Yamanaka Clans due to how close those three particular clans were to one another. And Tora's dark hair would be lost amongst the browns and blacks of the Nara.

Kakashi shook his head no half a second after that thought passed through his mind; Tora and Kuma were both far too energetic to have been raised by the Nara. It was possible, however, for the Yamanaka to have raised them both (if only so they could maintain a close watch on the boys to make certain their mental stability didn't degrade) while sending them to the Nara or Akimichi for socialization since the other two clans were far larger than the Yamanaka. He supposed it was also possible that the Akimichi had raised them too; though Chouza hadn't seemed quite as invested in Tora's health as his two teammates.

Kakashi shelved that line of thinking when he realized that he didn't have any solid evidence to support the theory outside of his current suspicions. He also couldn't discount the possibility that the two teens had been raised by ANBU due to how entrenched they were within the ANBU Facility. There was also the fact that they had claimed Akimichi Torifu, in his occupation as the former ANBU Commander, had been their handler and it could have been that connection that had brought him to the attention to the Nara, Yamanaka, and Akimichi Clans.

He also needed to consider the fact that Tora supposedly had a guardian; Inoichi had specifically mentioned said guardian during their meeting at the bar last week. And there was a distinct difference between a handler and a guardian because a guardian implied an emotional investment (from the guardian's point of view) while a handler would be more concerned with keeping his charge's emotions in check. There'd been no indication as to who that guardian was though or if the two teens potentially shared the same guardian.

So, it was entirely possible that the Nara had raised one child while the Yamanaka raised the other. Of course, there was still a possibility that they'd grown up inside of ANBU Headquarters. It was even possible that Inoichi had only used the word 'guardian' to throw Kakashi off in order to protect the secret of the two teens' identities (or lack thereof) outside of the mask.

Two steps later, Kakashi dropped the topic entirely since the only way to find out if he was correct was to ask the two teens and they were unlikely to be happy with him if they that learned he was trying to dig up more information on them without their permission. Kasai had specifically warned him that doing such a thing would upset the two fifteen year olds and he already knew that they didn't trust him enough to divulge that information on their own. He was in no way, shape, or form fond of splinters.

_Guess that means I'm just going to have to invest a little more effort into gaining their trust_, Kakashi told himself as he turned into the hallway that housed The Gauntlet and found all three of his subordinates waiting beside the door to the infamous training room. An anticipatory smirk slid onto his dual masked face a heartbeat later as he sauntered up to join his squad beside the training room; it was time to put his team through the wringer. _In the mean time, I might as well see if I can't whip my squad into proper shape now that we're all together and off of medical restriction._

"Are you ready to have a little fun, kiddies?" Kakashi asked as he slowed to a stop beside the others. He received three prompt affirmations in return and Kakashi's smirk widened as he clapped his hands together in anticipation before he drawled, "First run is all about speed; I'm looking to break a few training records. The only rules are; don't use anything but the basics, don't leave your teammates behind, and don't get caught. I want to see how fast we are without any fancy tricks or outside help. Any questions…?"

"Are we playing follow the leader or every man for himself?" Kuma inquired after exchanging a brief glance with Tora.

"For this first run, it doesn't matter so long as you don't loose the rest of us. Any other questions? No? Then let's get moving; times a wasting and I want to get at least another fourteen runs in today before we call it quits."

"I miss Yagi-teichou," Tora muttered under his breath as the four of them slipped inside of the training room. "He only tried to run us into the ground every day; not kill us."

Kakashi laughed as he shut the door behind him and activated the barrier to let the Gauntlet Trainers know that they were in the room and to start the clock; he was intimately familiar with Yagi's hellish training methods. The two self-claimed brothers flipped him the bird in response before they disappeared into the surrounding forest of the first room. Taka let out a soft laugh before he followed the two younger boys; the older man obviously interested in seeing firsthand what else their two youngest squad members were capable of doing.

Shaking his head, Kakashi gave them a three second head start before he too took to the trees.

* * *

_November 05, 0295 AtD, 6:02 AM  
Konohagakure no Sato, Hi no Kuni_

On the opposite side of the facility and one level below the training room where Tora and Kuma were currently being 'killed' by their captain, the artificial redhead now known only as Yuri sluggishly slogged her way through Konoha's early history in the otherwise empty Lecture Hall. Over the past twelve days, the kunoichi-in-training formerly known as Ni'i Yugito had quickly reached the conclusion that Tora had been one hundred percent correct in his assessment of Yagi-teichou's training methods. The man _was_ a slave driver.

And her brain had all but melted from the sheer number of facts that man had made her memorize each day.

That wasn't even touching on her physical training.

She had not received the promised bruises on her bruises that Tora had told her to expect but she had been drilled endlessly on chakra control and taijutsu stances. She'd also been run ragged through what Yagi-teichou called a Level One Obstacle Course where she had to repeatedly navigate through a series of stationary obstacles at full speed for an entire hour twice a day (once in the morning with chakra and once in the afternoon without chakra). If not for the three years that she'd spent in Kumo's Shinobi Academy, Yuri didn't think she'd have survived her first session on the course let alone any of the subsequent ones.

Hell, if not for the extra boost that the Nibi's chakra provided, she probably still wouldn't have survived! She certainly wouldn't have been able to crawl out of bed each morning before dawn without the healing factor that the bijuu's chakra gave her washing away her aches and pains while she slept. Even then, she'd gone to bed each and every night feeling completely wrung out and utterly exhausted to the bone.

The one time she had worked up enough courage to complain about the hellish training Yagi-teichou was putting her through, the goat-masked shinobi had turned around and asked her if she planned to be a kunoichi or if she intended to be a fan-girl playing at being a kunoichi.

That was a no-brainer.

She was _not_ a fan-girl.

No matter what that old pervert had implied when he'd been teasing her about the way she'd 'chased' after Tora. She'd seen the sneers and looks of disgust that the real kunoichi had given the fan-girls in the Academy and she had no desire to have such looks sent her way. It was one thing to be hated and feared by everyone who'd known she was the Nibi's host but she had never wanted to be held in contempt on top of that. No, there was no way she was ever going to settle for being a useless fan-girl.

In the back of her mind, the Nibi shifted irritably and Yuri scowled as she was abruptly reminded that her prisoner had been growing increasingly unhappy since the day she'd been assigned to Yagi-teichou. The two-tailed demon was highly displeased by the fact that they'd not once seen Tora since that day. Even worse, the Nibi hadn't sensed Tora's chakra any where in the ANBU Facility; meaning that he wasn't even in the building. She had thought she'd at least see the teen in between training sessions but she hadn't even seen his brother around.

She should probably count herself lucky that the Nibi hadn't resumed tormenting her in response to the teen's absence. The bijuu's current grumpiness was bad enough all on its own; she didn't think she'd be able to deal with the nightmares and taunts it used to torment her with on top of the grueling training and lessons Yagi-teichou was giving her. Not even her former handler had pushed her as hard as Yagi-teichou pushed her. She supposed it helped that he had not moved her out of Tora's room and that she knew the green-eyed teen was alive because her disguise seal was still active.

Yuri was also thankful that the Nibi hadn't tried to bully her into sneaking out of the ANBU Facility in order to track down the missing Tora. Somehow, she didn't think her new handler would be all that impressed with her if she pulled a stunt like that. There were times when she thought that her fixation on Tora (which was mostly the Nibi's fixation on the older boy) annoyed the man. The rest of the time, he just seemed amused by it. Or at least it seemed that way to her.

Letting out a soft sigh, Yuri returned her attention to the scroll that she was supposed to be reading.

She would have roughly a half hour of uninterrupted studying before a huge spike of elation from the Nibi caught her off guard with its intensity. It would take her a good three minutes before she finally figured out why the bijuu was feeling so pleased when it had been brooding and irritable for the last twelve days; the Nibi could once again sense Tora nearby. Yuri wasn't quite certain how she herself felt about that. On one hand, she rather liked and trusted Tora. On the other hand though, every time she saw him, Tora would inevitably annoy her with his teasing.

She wasn't sure she liked being drenched with ice cold water or beaned in the head with snow balls either.

~ _**Liar,**_ ~ the two-tailed cat smugly hissed in the back of her mind. ~ _**You love the way he treats you.**_ ~

"I do not!" Yuri automatically protested under her breath in a tone that was more than just a touch petulant.

~ _**Yes, you do. You love the fact that he treats you the way you always wished the pathetic worms of Kumo had treated you. You love the fact that he looks at you and sees you instead of seeing me. You love the way he openly accepts your physical affection without pushing you away and how he willingly touches you without flinching and without seeking to take advantage of you. And you absolutely love the fact that he is not afraid of you because of me.**_ ~

Yuri blushed bright red and sank down in her chair as she tried to ignore the truth in the bijuu's words. And the damn demon cat knew it too. She could hear its rumbling laughing-purr in the back of her head even now.

"Is that why you like him, then? Because he isn't afraid of you?" Yuri half demanded in an attempt to push the bijuu's attention off of her and get it to finally tell her why it was so determined to stay near the teen.

~ _**No.**_ ~

"Why won't you tell me why you like him so much?"

~ _**You are too human to understand and you have not yet earned my trust.**_ ~

"And how exactly am I supposed to earn your trust?" Yuri growled as she glared down at the open scroll on her desk without actually seeing it. "Until Tora saved me from those perverts, all you ever did was make me miserable every chance you got."

~_** Turnabout is fair play to you humans, ne? My freedom was stolen from me and I have spent decades imprisoned within fleshy jails just like you. You're just one more worm seeking to use me. **_~

"Like I had any choice!" Yuri yelled as she jumped to her feet in anger. "I never asked to be your stupid jailer! I was a baby when you were sealed in me! I never even knew that some stupid jerk had stuffed you in me until I was eight! I've been stuck with you for _years_ and I've been nothing but miserable because of you! If they had ever asked me if I wanted you, then I would have told them no!"

The Nibi didn't say anything in reply and Yuri was left gasping for breath beneath the weight of her anger. It was the first time she'd ever yelled at the demon cat. Oh, she'd wanted to yell and curse at it every time she'd been forced to face it in her attempts to befriend the bijuu but she'd never been brave enough to do so. After a full two minutes had passed and the Nibi still hadn't responded, Yuri let out a soft huff, dropped back into her seat, crossed her arms over her chest, and resumed glaring her assigned reading material into submission.

The moment she stopped expecting a reply, the Nibi spoke up once more and asked, ~ _**Do you hate me?**_ ~

"No. I want to hate you but I don't."

~ _**Why not? As you said, I am the reason you were always so miserable. **_~

"What's the point? It's not like hating you will change anything. I'm still going to be stuck with you for the rest of my life whether I like you or not," Yuri replied without any heat as she unfolded her arms and grabbed hold of the long braid she still kept her hair tied up in; though she no longer wrapped it – that was just one of the habits she'd been forced to drop lest someone figure out that she used to be Ni'i Yugito.

She actually didn't mind leaving her hair unwrapped; she liked the dark red color of her hair (even if it had been weird not having blonde hair at first). And if she only liked it because Tora had said that his mother (who he'd named her after) had had red hair, well, she'd never admit it to anyone out loud. She'd also never willingly admit just how honored she felt over him gifting her with his mother's name for her new name. And it was a gift. He could have chosen to give her any number of less personal names but his mother's precious name had been his first and only choice.

Her attention was dragged back to the matter at hand when the Nibi spoke up once more.

~ _**Is that what you truly believe?**_ ~

"Yes."

~ _**Yet you still resent me, ne?**_ ~

"Of course, I resent you! You'd insulted me, threatened me, and tormented me for an entire year! You demanded that I turn traitor for you and if the Raikage ever learns where I am, he'll raze Konoha to the ground in order to get his hands on me so that he can rip you out of me just so he can put you in someone else more loyal to him and Kumo and then Tora will hate us both for getting his home destroyed!"

~ _**Kogami would never allow any one to destroy his home.**_ ~

"Huh? Kogami? Who's that supposed to be?"

~ _**The one who calls himself Tora, he has been touched by the Shinigami; I can smell death clinging to him like a second skin and by rights he should be dead. And yet he lives. Tell me, what mere mortal could defy Death so openly without twisting and tainting his soul to achieve that which he has not earned?**_ ~

Yuri frowned as she tried to wrap her head around the idea that the Nibi thought Tora was a baby god. She just couldn't picture the teen as anything but an annoying boy who had saved her from her pitiful existence in Kumo. And yet… And yet the Nibi's claim almost made perfect sense; only a god would dismiss the danger of a bijuu showing interest in him the way Tora did. It still seemed strange to think of Tora as a god though; what kind of god started snow fights, teased little girls, or played silly pranks?

_The insane kind_, a voice in the back of her mind whispered but Yuri ignored it.

Instead, Yuri focused on the bit the Nibi had said about Tora being touched by the shinigami and the way the two-tailed cat could smell death on the teen. Her brow furrowed as she wondered if the reason the Nibi could smell 'death' on the teen was because of the supposed ability that was attributed to the Nibi to 'raise' and 'command' the dead. There'd been no records in Kumo of anyone actually ever seeing the Nibi perform such a feat but that just could be because none of the previous Jinchuuriki that had held the demon cat had been able to draw upon that ability.

~ _**No one can truly raise the dead without angering the Shinigami,**_ ~ the Nibi dryly corrected in an amused purr. ~ _**I am fully capable of animating the corpses of the dead and sending them up against those humans that attack me. None of the fleshy worms that were my past jailers bothered to learn the difference though and so therefore never pulled on my ability to 'make the dead rise up and attack' their enemies. The creation of the technique that you humans refer to as puppetry was based upon my ability to 'command' the bodies of the dead. **_~

"Why tell me about the difference?"

The Nibi was quiet for a long moment before it answered, ~ _**You earned a reward for finally finding the courage to speak your mind and heart to me.**_ ~

Yuri's mind blanked out for a full minute the moment she understood that the Nibi had rewarded her for basically yelling at it and telling it how she really felt about it. She then turned thoughtful as she considered exactly what that meant. It only took her a few minutes to realize that the Nibi probably appreciated the honesty. The concept that a demon could understand, let alone appreciate a human concept like honesty shocked the kunoichi-in-training because all her life she'd been taught that the bijuu were unthinking and unfeeling demons.

Two seconds later, she felt ashamed of the beliefs that she'd been taught by the Kumo Academy when she recalled the day she'd been introduced to Tora and Kuma's summonses. Neither the beavers nor the otters were human. Nor were they demons. Yet they too had understood most human concepts like honesty, honor, betrayal, and the like. And the one thing that humans, summonses, and demons all had in common was the fact that they were all sentient beings; meaning that they were all capable of thinking and feeling.

It was at that point that Yuri realized that part of the reason she'd had so much trouble befriending the Nibi was because she had ignored (and to a certain point, outright dismissed) the Nibi's sentience due to the false beliefs she'd been taught.

She wouldn't want to befriend a being that didn't believe she could think and feel either. And even though the Nibi hated humans, the bijuu had never once implied that humans were mindless. Stupid? And irritating? Yes! Mindless? No.

~ _**Do not think too harshly of yourself over that mistake, child; that was a lesson that your predecessors never learned and the biggest reason why they were incapable of containing me for more than a handful of years each.**_ ~

"So, does that mean that when the jerk told me that I wasn't trying hard enough to befriend you when your past hosts had befriended you within weeks of starting their training; he was lying to me?"

~ _**Yes, he lied to you. Mostly because my past hosts lied to the other humans because they did not wish to reveal their failures out of fear that I would be taken from them and placed in another. You, though; you were the first of my jailers to ever openly admit failure. You are also the youngest fleshy worm to ever hold me.**_ ~

"Huh," Yuri numbly exhaled in response to learning that her former handler was a bigger jerk (and apparently a bigger idiot too) than she'd previously believed. The sound of the Nibi's laughing purr snapped her out of her brief funk and it was pure curiosity that had her ask, "Are you a boy or a girl?"

~ _**Neither and both. My siblings and I are not physical creatures and therefore have no need to define ourselves by something as trite as gender; though it is possible for us to take a physical form. Throughout history, mortals have named us gods, demons, and spirits due to the power we hold but even those appellations hold little truth.**_ ~

"Oh, then what do I call you? I mean, is Nibi your name or just a title? It doesn't really feel right to refer to you as an 'it' anymore after what I just learned about you."

~ _**Nibi merely refers to the number of tails I have. My name is Matatabi.**_ ~

"I guess it's nice to finally meet you properly, Matatabi. I'm sure you already know my old name and the new name that Tora gave me, so you can just call me Yuri."

~ _**Of course, Yuri-chan.**_ ~

"Ne, Matatabi; how come there was never any record of your name in the files that Kumo had on you?"

~ _**There is power in a name, chiisana hana koneko, and I refuse to grant just anyone the privilege of learning my name. It also goes without saying that I would be most upset with you if you were to pass along the knowledge of my name to any and every fleshy worm seeking power over me. The only other one who has earned the right to know my name is Kogami.**_ ~

"What about Tora's brother? They're usually always together and Tora might get mad at me if I tell him he has to keep secrets from Kuma."

~ _**If you must. Though, it is more than a little grating to think that one of those damned Senju will learn my name.**_ ~

"Senju…?"

~ _**Aa, what else could the rotten fleshy worm be but a blasted Senju with that thrice-cursed Mokuton?**_ ~

Before Yuri could respond to the Nibi's question, the door to the lecture hall opened up to admit Yagi-teichou and Yuri blanched as she jerked her eyes around to check the clock on the wall above the chalkboard at the front of the lecture hall for the time before she dropped her eyes down to the scroll that she was supposed to have read that morning. She'd not even gotten through a quarter of the material in it!

"Have you finished your reading yet, Yuri-chan?" Yagi demanded the moment she'd looked up. Swallowing back her fear of being punished for not finishing her assignment, Yuri nervously shook her head no because she didn't trust herself to speak. "Oh? Why not…?"

"I was talking to the Nibi and didn't notice how much time had passed," Yuri sheepishly, if honestly, admitted as her cheeks grew warm with embarrassment.

"Let me guess, your passenger revealed that Tora had returned and you immediately started daydreaming?"

Yuri shook her heard no and bit her lip as she silently wondered just how much of what Matatabi had told she could tell the man in order to prove that she wasn't acting like a stupid fan-girl. She jumped a bit when she sensed Matatabi give her a mental nudge before the Nibi stated, ~ _**You may share as much or as little as you wish of our conversation so long as you tell no one but Kogami and his cursed brother my name.**_ ~

Yuri silently acknowledged the permission Matatabi had just given her before she calmly lifted her gaze to meet her handler's eyes as she bravely countered, "Chigau, I was not daydreaming. Yes, the Nibi informed me that Tora was in the building but Tora's return was not the only thing we spoke about. We insulted each other a bit and I earned a little respect from the Nibi because I told…" Yuri briefly paused in order to figure out how to refer to the Nibi without calling the being an 'it' and once she made a decision, she continued, "…him how I really felt about him for the first time."

"The Nibi then rewarded me for my honesty by answering some of my questions and correcting some of the lies and misconceptions that I'd been told and taught about the Nibi and his abilities. It was the first time I'd ever just talked to him like that and it would have been rude to just ignore him in return for his willingness to talk to me. I didn't think we'd been talking all that long until you came back or I might have asked him if we could continue talking after I was done with my lessons and training for the day."

Yagi-teichou tipped his head to one side and studied Yuri for a moment before he asked, "And what was it that you learned from the bijuu that had enthralled you to the point where you didn't note the passing time?"

"Lots of things but most of it's just stuff that's only really important to the bijuu; like how they don't really have genders because they aren't like us or how he has a name but doesn't like to tell people what it is because he said that names have power. He also told me why he doesn't like Kuma but he still wouldn't tell me why he likes Tora so much because he said I was too human to understand. He did sorta tell me how he sees Tora though but it's weird and I'm not really sure about it. The rest of the stuff we talked about was the lies that were taught about him in Kumo."

"Why doesn't the Nibi like Kuma?"

"Because he's a Senju."

"Actually, no he's not."

~ _**Liar! I can smell the Senju in him!**_ ~ Matatabi roared in Yuri's mind and Yuri winced in response to the Nibi's yell as the volume of the bijuu's cry sent a brief spike of pain through her head.

"The Nibi just called you a liar because he said that he could smell the Senju in him. He also said something about the Mokuton earlier."

"I didn't lie; neither Kuma nor Tora are Senju even if they both carry the Mokuton. It's not possible for me to explain to you how that's possible though. The only ones allowed to speak of that information are the Hokage, Tora, and Kuma."

Matatabi growled in the back of Yuri's mind but otherwise remained silent and Yuri wondered if that was because of Yagi-teichou's claim that Kuma was not a Senju or if it was the revelation that Tora also carried the Mokuton. She knew she'd seen Tora grow things but the things he grew never really looked anything like the things that Kuma grew.

"Was that the only reason the Nibi gave you for why he dislikes Kuma?"

"Yes."

"Okay," Yagi-teichou drawled in a tone that said he didn't quite know what to think about the information that he'd just been given. "And you said that the Nibi told you how he saw Tora but that he still wouldn't tell you why he was drawn to him?"

"Sorta, I mean he said something about the way Tora smells and it was really weird."

"What was it the Nibi said about Tora's scent that was so weird?"

Yuri hesitated to answer the question as she thought about the nickname that Matatabi had given the green-eyed boy; she wasn't sure if she should tell the man that the Nibi saw the teen as some kind of baby god. She had a hard time thinking of Tora as a godling and she didn't think Tora would like it if she went around telling everyone that Matatabi had called him one. She knew she wouldn't like it because then people would expect things of her that she might not be able to ever do and then people would be mad.

With that in mind, Yuri decided not to tell Yagi-teichou about the Nibi's nickname for Tora. As soon as she reached that conclusion, she answered Yagi's question, "The Nibi said that Tora smelled like death. He also said that Tora should be dead because he was touched by the shinigami."

"That is… concerning but not exactly unexpected."

"Why…?"

"I'm afraid that that is none of your business, young lady. Now, if there's nothing else you feel you need to tell me about the conversation you had with your passenger, then you need to pack up your things because it's past time for you to hit the training rooms."

"What about my reading from this morning?" Yuri asked as she quickly packed up her things.

"You may finish it later. I won't penalize you for not getting it done this time due to the fact that your time had been well spent based upon what you did learn from the Nibi; just don't expect me to be lenient in the future if it happens again."

"Hai, Yagi-teichou."

Yuri would spend the next hour repeatedly running through the Level One Obstacle Course before she spent the rest of the morning doing chakra control exercises. She'd get a short break for lunch and Yuri used part of that time to catch up a bit on her reading since she suspected that Yagi wasn't going to postpone her scheduled assignments just because she'd missed one. The man _was_ a slave driver. After lunch, she'd spend an hour meditating (to further improve her chakra control), two hours working on her taijutsu form, and then a second hour in the Obstacle Course for another round.

An early supper would then precede three hours of study in the ANBU Library where she finished her morning reading before she worked her way through the various worksheets that Yagi had assigned for the day; most of them pertaining to the material she'd just read with a few others covering stuff she'd already learned to make sure she hadn't forgotten anything. Yuri half feared that she'd start forgetting things any day now because all the new stuff she had to learn would start pushing everything else out of her head.

By the time Yuri was let go at the end of those three hours, she felt completely wrung out and worried that her right hand might fall off at the wrist any day now due to how many worksheets she had to fill out each night. The walk back to Tora's room was far too long and Yuri muttered half-hearted complaints under her breath about slave drivers and sadistic architects each step of the way. When Matatabi began purring loudly as she turned down the hallway that held Tora's room, Yuri immediately thought the Nibi was laughing at her misery.

Her assumption was soon corrected by the two-tailed cat as Matatabi laughingly instructed, ~ _**Look to the end of the hall, chiisana hana koneko; what do you see?**_ ~

Yuri glanced up as instructed and immediately felt her exhaustion fade into the background as she caught sight of Tora and Kuma leaning against one another in front of Kuma's door. Bounding forward, Yuri threw herself at Tora and tackled him to the ground as she crowed, "Tora! You're back!"

"Itai," Tora weakly moaned from beneath Yuri as she hugged the stuffing out of him while the Nibi continued to purr happily in the back of her mind.

"Ditto!" Kuma groaned from where he'd ended up sprawled on the floor after he'd lost the support that Tora had been providing to him.

"I thought the pain was supposed to end when we finished running the Gauntlet for the fifteenth time," Tora complained in a tone that sounded rather whiney and Yuri giggled because it made him sound like some of the crybaby boys that Yuri had known from Kumo's Academy.

"No, I'm quite certain Inu-teichou promised up more pain tomorrow," Kuma countered tiredly.

"Pfft… that's tomorrow; I know he said we were done for today! So, why am I still in pain?"

"Probably because you got hit by a human avalanche in the middle of the hallway."

"Figures. Why are all children such pains?"

"I'm not a pain!" Yuri protested as she pushed up so that she was straddling Tora's chest and scowled down at him.

"The throbbing lump on the back of my head and the searing ache in all my abused muscles from you plowing into me says otherwise," Tora drawled as he peeled open one eye in order to give her an unimpressed look.

"You didn't come see me once since you named me," Yuri grumbled as her cheeks turned red with embarrassment in response to being called out on her rough and overly enthusiastic greeting of the teen.

"We had things to do that we couldn't put off any longer," Kuma explained in Tora's place.

"No you didn't; I heard Kasai tell you that you had two weeks vacation!"

"Vacation does not equate free time; a vacation is merely a break from out-of-village missions. There's still personal business that has to be done, favors that need to be paid back, routine maintenance that needs to be taken care of, and training that can't be escaped," Tora retorted a split second before he grabbed hold of Yuri and rolled them both over so that she was no longer sitting on top of him. He then stood up so he could help Kuma off of the floor. "Besides, you might as well get used to going long periods of time without seeing me since there'll be times we'll be gone on missions for months at a time, youjiyo."

"Months…?" Yuri parroted in horror as she completely missed the fact that Tora had called her a little girl _again_.

"Aa, months."

"But I don't want you to be gone months!" Yuri unthinkingly blurted out only to slap her hands over her mouth the moment she realized what she'd just said.

~ _**I told you; you like the way he treats you,**_ ~ Matatabi sing-sang with a purring laugh.

"Urusai!" Yuri hissed from under her hands as Matatabi's teasing taunt only deepened her embarrassment.

"Uh, we didn't say anything," Kuma interjected as the two teens eyed her with confusion.

"Urgh!" Yuri growled as she buried the rest of her face in her hands and curled in on herself while wondering if it was possible to actually die of embarrassment.

She had no idea how long she was sitting on the floor sulking before she suddenly found herself being picked up and carried. The only reason why she didn't panic over being lifted off the floor without warning like that was because she had recognized Tora's scent and Matatabi was still purring happily. Yuri felt herself being set down on a cushion just two minutes later and when she dropped her hands away from her face, she found herself seated at a low table in Kuma's room.

"Here, I made some tea," Tora murmured as he set a steaming cup on the table in front of her.

"Why is it always tea? Why can't you offer milk sometimes?" Yuri inquired as she picked up the cup and frowned into the dark amber liquid gently steaming inside.

"Ah, but properly made tea soothes the soul with its heavenly combination of subtle flavors and at the same time relaxes the body with its gentle heat speeding up the absorption of the medicinal properties of the seasonings and herbs used to flavor the delicately brewed beverage. Only a tea hating heathen would be unable to appreciate the therapeutic properties of real tea."

"You're nuts," Yuri flatly stated in response to Tora's weird speech as she lifted her gaze from her tea cup to warily eye the green-eyed teen.

Tora harrumphed under his breath as he dropped down beside Kuma before he muttered, "No appreciation for the finer things in life, I tell you."

"Oh, the rest of us heathens appreciate things just fine; we just don't get what's so special about tea," Kuma quipped before he was forced to duck a head slap from Tora.

"Remind me to spike your candied walnuts with wasabi when I'm no longer half dead."

"Oi! Leave my nuts out of this!"

"After you insulted my tea? Never!"

"You're both idiots," Yuri declared around a giggle as she watched the two teens get into a playful shoving match.

"Correction; we're exhausted idiots," Kuma countered around a yawn as Tora succeeded in pushing him over.

"That sounds about right," Tora agreed as he promptly turned away from Kuma and snagged the cup of tea sitting in front of him. "So, we know why we feel as if we should be dead but why do you look like a bedraggled kitten?"

"Yagi-teichou really is a slave driver and he's always making me read through boring history scrolls, do a bunch of dull chakra exercises, endlessly run through my taijutsu stances, and spend all night filling out stupid worksheets!" Yuri automatically exclaimed as she recalled just how exhausted she felt now that the initial excitement of seeing Tora again had worn off. Focusing on her training also made it easier for her to ignore the way Tora's use of the words 'should be dead' had sharply reminded her of the Nibi claiming that Tora really _should_ be dead.

"Well, I did warn you about him."

"I'd rather know how to make him stop."

Kuma snorted in response to that before he drawled, "Yeah, good luck with that. I'm pretty certain Yagi-teichou doesn't come with an off button and that his training programs only come with one setting; grueling."

"I'd still rather be trained by Yagi-teichou again than be put through genjutsu resistance training with Ibiki again," Tora dryly countered as he refilled his tea cup and Yuri frowned when she realized she hadn't even seen the teen drink the first cup.

"Here, here!" Kuma agreed with a shudder.

"What's so bad about genjutsu resistance training?" Yuri inquired curiously as she finally took a sip of her tea now that it was no longer quite so hot and immediately tasted honey, lemon, chamomile, and the faint bitterness of willow bark. It was a bit of a weird flavor combination but it wasn't too horrible. She still would have preferred to have a bit of warm milk instead though; and no, that was _not_ a cat thing.

"Being hit with genjutsu after genjutsu is never fun."

"At least you didn't have to fully experience genjutsu after genjutsu, Tora."

"No, I just had to suffer constant bouts of vertigo for hours at a time and put up with you and Aoba teasing me for days on end because it took me hours to walk straight after each training session. I almost would've preferred to have suffered through an actual genjutsu or two… well, so long as it wasn't Ibiki who was casting it. I didn't have to see his illusions to know they sucked based on the way you and Birdbrain had reacted to them."

"It was far too amusing to watch you stagger about like a drunken sailor not to laugh," Kuma retorted around a snicker that quickly turned to a yelp when Tora dump a pile of snow on him without warning.

Yuri quickly retreated to Kuma's bed in order to escape the snow and mud fight that broke out between the two boys; she was still far too tired to keep up with them and she didn't want to end up soaked to the bone and covered in mud. As she watched the two teens goofing around, Yuri couldn't help but wonder where they'd found the energy to wrestle and conjure up different elements when they'd barely been standing when she first saw them. She also silently admitted that she was more than a little jealous of them having energy enough to spare that they could goof around.

Mostly, though, Yuri was just happy that Tora was back.

Yuri was just wondering how much longer the teens would keep playing (she still needed to tell Tora about the things Matatabi had told her and ask him how he and his brother ended up with the Mokuton that the Nibi hated so much) when she fell asleep on Kuma's bed.

* * *

**Translations:** Japanese to English

Aa – yes  
Chiisana hana koneko – little flower kitten (nickname given to Yugito/Yuri by Matatabi and a reference to her new name and the fact that he sees her as a child due to her age)  
Chigau – can be used to mean wrong, no, or to differ  
Hai – yes  
Itai – ouch  
Kogami – Little God from ko (little) + kami (god/spirit)  
Ne – used to solicit agreement or confirmation from the listener similar to using 'isn't it?' or 'right?' in English  
Oi – hey  
Urusai – shut up (rude)  
Youjiyo – little girl

**Notes: **

Tora &amp; the Shinigami – No, this isn't an allusion to Kojimaru/Harry being the MoD; he never owned (let alone touched) all three Hallows before he was ripped out of his world. The Nibi merely scented 'death' on Kojimaru due to the number of times that he 'should' have died; when the Killing Curse struck him as an infant, when he was ripped out of his world by magic, when his Hyouton was partially activated by Orochimaru, again when his Mokuton was partially activated by Orochimaru, and when all three of his 'Kekkei Genkai' were fully activated the day he ran into the wild cat.

In each incident listed, he came close enough to death that he was 'touched' by the shinigami but still survived and that is what Matatabi scents on him. No, Matatabi doesn't know why Kojimaru has survived. Nor is the nickname he gave Kojimaru an indication that Kojimaru is more than he seems. The Nibi is not all-knowing and he is making assumptions based upon what he senses through the limited connection he has with death through his abilities. I can, without giving too much away, say that each bijuu will view Kojimaru differently; just like certain animals react to him differently.

* * *

**AN:** _Not really sure how I managed to wrap this chapter up as quickly as I did once I started working on it again. I was fully expecting it to take me much longer to finish this chapter because of how much of a pain Matatabi was being the first time I tried to write this chapter. Going back over the past six chapters and doing a bit of rereading and editing helped a bit, methinks. In any case, we're pretty much moving into the next arc at this point. _

_The next chapter will actually be an intermission of sorts to deal w/ what's happened in the wizarding world over the past twelve or so years and then the chapter after that will be another transitory type chapter typing the next arc into this last arc. Nope, I'm not telling you what the next arc will cover. You'll find out in two or three chapters (depends on how the chap after next flows). In any case, the next chapter and the next arc are both outlined and I've already started writing the intermission; I just don't know when it'll be finished. _

_I have no idea when I'll have something else ready for posting on another story either. I'm still stuck on the next chapter of Twice Blessed Shinobi (my theory of magic for that fic is giving me some issues and Remus isn't cooperating with me about the diagnostic scan he's supposed to perform), I'm having trouble with an important battle in the next arc of An Epic Adventure, the press dislikes me in Unseen Deductions, Tony's being his usual prickish self in Destiny Delayed, and the whole Hallows plot is a mess in Banished Destiny. So, I'll be working on this story and maybe one of my Hunter x Hunter stories until I catch a break on one of those._

_The last thing I'll mention here is that the last six chapters were re-uploaded with edited versions and while most of the changes made were just me fixing my spelling and grammar mistakes, I did add and reword a few things. The most changes were made to Chap 38: The Vacation but even then most of what I did was add or reword a few descriptions so that they flowed better. There's no real need to go back and reread any or all of those chapters though; not unless you want to. _

_That pretty much covers everything, I think. Thanks for being patient while I dealt with a few recent issues (details are still on my author's page if you're interested, if not, don't worry about it) and I hope the chapter was worth the wait. I'll keep a running word count for the next chapter of this (and all of my other stories) on my author's page so you'll have a better idea of when you can expect to see the next update. ~ Jenn_


	41. The Intermission

**Disclaimer:** _All HP characters are the property of JKR, the WB, and respective publishing companies and all Naruto characters are the property of Masashi Kishimoto. This is nothing more than a simple FanFiction that I have written. I have made no money from this or any of the other stories I have posted on this or other sites._

**Warnings:** _Mild to moderate violence, character death, alternate universe (i.e. kiss canon goodbye), OCC behaviors and personalities, a number of original characters and obscure canon characters to flesh out family trees, random chosen last names to give a number of characters surnames, and who knows what else._

**AN:** _This story is self-beta'd; so there may be occasional grammatical or spelling errors that crop up every now and then and for those I apologize in advance._

* * *

Chapter Forty-One: The Intermission

_July 31, 1991, 9:44 AM  
Headmaster's Office, Hogwarts Castle_

Albus silently stroked his beard as he considered the acceptance letter that had been delivered to him just half an hour earlier. That letter was the culmination of eight years worth of hard work and his greatest and most shameful lie. Albus also considered it to be his greatest failure and the wizarding world's only hope. Pulling his eyes from the messy letter signed with an equally messy signature, Albus let his gaze drift over to the replacement device that was monitoring the life and health of 'Harry Potter' as his thoughts drifted back over the past eight years.

After the death of the real Harry Potter, Albus had quickly scrambled to erase any and all evidence that the last Potter had died. Once there was no chance that little Harry's death would be discovered by any one in their community, Albus had spent the next three years diligently hunting for a replacement child. It had been a long and frustrating search but two months into the fourth year, Albus had finally stumbled upon an orphaned magical child bearing a strong resemblance to the deceased Potter boy; only his hair had been dark brown instead of black and his eyes had been blue instead of green.

Correcting the minor differences had been fairly easy; all it took was an old alchemic elixir laced with a couple of hairs and some blood of the original Harry (both items Albus had had on hand since before the little Potter's first birthday for use with the life monitor). The elixir in question had been banned in the early eighteen hundreds due to the high number of disowned bastard or squib children and vengeful muggleborns that had used it to steal the inheritances of purebloods. The elixir was basically an alchemic version of the Polyjuice Potion that had been combined with an Adoption Potion.

Once drank, the elixir would allow the drinker to permanently 'adopt' the identity of the person whose blood and hair they had used in the elixir.

There were flaws in the elixir though; which is why Albus hadn't been able to use it on the first orphan available. The drinker had to be magical (of course), they had to bear a fairly close resemblance to the person they were looking to become, be within six months of the 'target's' actual age, and they had to be willing to fully embrace the identity of the person whom they were replacing. Additionally, the blood and hair used had to be collected from a living source and the source of those two ingredients had to be dead before they were added to the finished elixir.

Even if all of the above criteria had been met, there was still a chance that the fraud could be uncovered if a sample of their blood was tested against a blood sample taken directly from the 'victim' at any point in the first three years after drinking the elixir. At the end of those three years, the drinker's blood would have fully 'changed' over to match the original individual's blood. The same held true for the drinker's magical signature because a person's magical signature was directly linked to their blood.

So, even after Albus had finally found an adequate replacement, he hadn't been able to just bring him straight back to the wizarding world and claim that Harry Potter had been found. No, he'd needed to allow the child to continue living where he'd found him for the next three years _and_ ensure that no one else from the wizarding world had stumbled upon the boy in the mean time. That had meant that Albus had needed to carefully police and misdirect everyone who was actively searching for the missing Potter heir lest they find him too early.

Sirius had been more than a little unhappy with the distinct lack of progress in locating his missing godson over the past eight years. Remus had been just as unhappy. Thankfully, neither man had turned on Albus as they fully believed that Albus had been doing everything in his power to find the missing Potter. The fact that the replacement life monitor was still working soothed their tempers more often than not and Albus didn't even have to worry about them learning of the original device's malfunction because he'd replaced the transfigured device with a fully functioning one as soon as he'd located the replacement Harry.

He'd even updated the blood and hair samples the device relied on shortly after the three years required for the identity transformation to be complete had passed. There was no way for the new Harry Potter to be ousted as a fake; at least, not through magical or mundane means. The child could potentially give himself away but Albus had already dealt with that potential leak.

He had greatly disliked modifying the child's memories so heavily but he'd set his morals aside and did it anyway for the Greater Good. It had bothered him far less to modify the memories of the adults living and working at the orphanage where Albus had discovered the replacement Potter. A few Compulsion Charms had gone a long way towards fixing any potential discrepancies in the muggle paperwork that the orphanage and the Crown had on the former identity of the newly recreated Harry Potter.

No one would miss or mourn little Danny Radcliffe because no one would remember that he'd ever existed.

And now it was finally time to put Albus's little ruse to the test.

Letting out a heavy sigh, Albus drew the Elder Wand and cast the Patronus Charm before he sent it with a message to Sirius Black. It was finally time to allow Harry Potter to return to the wizarding world. Whether or not the wizarding world would accept the new Harry Potter as their long missing Boy-Who-Lived was another matter entirely. The first test would be to get Sirius to accept the child as his godson. The more important second test would be for the goblins to accept the child as the rightful heir to the Potter Vaults.

So long as the boy passed those two tests, then the rest of their world would accept the boy as their missing savior.

Knowing that Harry Potter's future was now out of his hands, Albus turned his mind to the other absent individual who had been on his mind constantly over the past eight years; Tom Riddle or as most of the wizarding world knew him, Lord Voldemort.

Despite the Ministry of Magic's stubborn stance that Voldemort had been killed on that fateful Halloween night, Albus had always maintained that the Dark Lord had only been weakened. His suspicions would be validated when he began hearing rumblings and rumors of something dark taking up residence in an Albanian forest well known as a gathering point for darker denizens of the wizarding world. The rumors had only grown in number right up until the night little Harry's original life monitor had been destroyed and then the rumors had dried up faster that a spring shower in a barren desert.

There hadn't been so much as a single whisper of a hint as to where Voldemort had gone after the Potter heir's death.

And that worried Albus greatly.

Albus didn't believe in coincidences; he usually blamed the harmless ones on clever pranksters and the rest of them on the darker elements of the magical world. Ergo; Harry's death was linked to Voldemort's disappearance. Albus greatly feared that Harry's death had been the result of Voldemort using the child to regain the power he'd lost almost ten years ago. It was entirely possible that Voldemort had taken the young Potter with him when he'd fled Godric's Hollow. That scenario would certainly explain why the child (or the child's body) had never been found.

Even more worrisome was that Voldemort didn't immediately pick up where he'd left off. That could only mean that the Dark Lord had gone underground in an attempt to rebuild his forces. Or that the ritual had potentially failed; leaving Voldemort in an overly vulnerable position. Either way, the lack of information was frustrating and worrisome because it left Albus blind to his former student's movements with no way to predict Voldemort's next move.

The fact that the Dark Lord had not made any attempts to contact his former followers was even more worrisome because it meant that Voldemort didn't trust any of his former Death Eaters. Either because he feared they'd take advantage of him in his weakened state or because those that were not in prison had proven themselves to be unfaithful to him. And that meant that the spies that Albus had cultivated near the end of in Voldemort's first rise would be useless once the Dark Lord finally made his move.

Even worse than that was the fact that none of the individuals that Albus had deftly maneuvered into investigating the last known location of Voldemort (according to old rumors) had found any traces of the Dark Lord. Not even Quirinus Quirrell (the former Muggle Studies professor, this year's Defense Against the Dark Arts professor, and a closet pureblood supremacist) had brought back any news of Voldemort. Albus had been so certain that sending a potential follower notoriously known for his submissiveness would have drawn Voldemort's attention like honey draws the fly.

The complete lack of information from the feelers he had sent out meant that the only thing Albus could do now was attempt to lure Voldemort to him.

To that end, Albus had created an incomplete Philosopher's Stone (using an old recipe that Nicolas Flamel had given to him upon his request two months earlier). The false Stone had then been set up in an out of the way corridor in the castle and 'protected' with a series of 'traps' that were all potentially lethal. Safeguards had been put in place to ensure that no students would be able to access the false Stone's hiding place and he planned to warn the children away from that corridor on the first night of term.

All that remained for him to do was spread rumors that Nicolas's Philosopher's Stone was at Hogwarts. He'd already started when he had asked Hagrid if he could borrow the cerberus he'd picked up last year. Hagrid was a good man and loyal to a fault but the half-giant couldn't keep a secret if his life depended on it. That was especially true when you got a little alcohol in him; giants, for all their strength and size, were complete lightweights when there was alcohol involved and Hagrid had apparently inherited that trait from his mother.

And Hagrid had a particular fondness for mead.

Albus knew he should feel guilty about using the child-like man in such a way but it was for the Greater Good. He needed to draw Voldemort out in open and the best way to that was for the rumor of the false Stone's presence here at the school to filter through the underworld. The improvements Albus had made to the school's wards also meant that he would know the instant that Voldemort crossed onto the school grounds. The only real question was whether or not the false Stone would be alluring enough of a prize to draw the Dark Lord out of hiding.

The venerable old headmaster figured the chances of his trap drawing the correct prey were exactly fifty/fifty.

If the Dark Lord's strength had been fully renewed by the ritual Albus was certain Voldemort had used the unfortunate Potter heir in, then he'd have no reason to seek out the Stone. However, if the ritual had failed or only been partially successful, then Voldemort would undoubtedly see the Stone as another chance to regain his power. There was also a slight chance that the Dark Lord would send someone else after the Stone in his place if Voldemort wished to avoid crossing paths with Albus before he was ready to reveal his presence to the world once more.

Not to toot his own horn but Albus had long been the only one that Voldemort (even at the height of his power) had ever really feared.

That fear could potentially prevent Voldemort from falling into the trap that Albus had laid for him. Albus only hoped that arrogance that he remembered from Voldemort's youth (from a time when the Dark Lord had still called himself Tom Riddle) would drive him to seek out the false Philosopher's Stone in an attempt to steal it out from underneath Albus's nose. The challenge of such a feat and the chance it would provide for Voldemort to strike a 'personal blow' against Albus would appeal to Voldemort's vanity.

At least, that was half the reason that Albus had chosen to place the trap in Hogwarts instead of elsewhere. The other half of the reason was due to the fact that Albus lived in the castle year round and would therefore be available to monitor the trap for the exact moment when Voldemort tripped the wards. His fellow educators were far less enthused about the idea but none of them had actually had the temerity to speak out against his decision. Even Minerva, the most vocal of those who had been against setting the trap in Hogwarts, had bowed to his superior reasoning in the end.

Albus's introspection was interrupted at that precise moment when the banked fire in his office fireplace flared upwards in a flash of green flames before it vomited out a thirty-one year wizard with shoulder length black hair, a neatly trimmed mustache and goatee that were equally black, and piercing gray eyes. Albus immediately recognized the man as Sirius Black, the godfather of the long absent Potter Heir. Sirius had barely finished stepping out of the fireplace before the flames surged upwards a second time to disgorge another thirty-one year old man with brown hair, facial scars, and near-wild amber laced blue eyes that Albus easily recognized as the werewolf, Remus Lupin.

"Where is he? Where's Harry?" Sirius demanded as his gaze swept through the office looking for his godson. "You said you found him! So where the hell is he?"

"I did not say that I had collected him; merely that he had finally been found," Albus calmly corrected with the twinkle in eye blasting at full force as he collected Mr. Potter's affirmation that he'd be attending Hogwarts come the start of the new term in September from his desk and passed it to Sirius. "I thought that you'd like to be the one to introduce him to the wizarding world and take him to purchase his school supplies."

Sirius accepted the letter with trembling hands and the naked hope on the younger wizard's face was almost enough to make Albus regret the necessity of lying to the man about his godson. It wasn't enough to make him confess though and Albus carefully schooled his face to ensure that he appeared both relieved and happy for the younger man.

"Is this real, Albus…?"

"It appears genuine. I imagine you'd be able to have the truth of it confirmed it through Gringotts or St. Mungo's if there is any doubt about the child's identity."

"Where exactly is he? I don't see an address in the letter."

"You can find him at St. Ninian's Orphanage in Fenwick, Northumberland," Albus answered as he collected the flimsy envelope that Harry's letter had arrived in and passed it to Sirius as the other man handed the letter off to Remus. "I trust you still have the key to young Harry's trust vault?"

"Yeah, I got it," Sirius absently replied as he clutched the envelope like a lifeline and stared unblinkingly at the address that had been stamped in the upper left-hand corner on the front of the envelope.

"Then I shall leave you to it," Albus replied as he settled back in his seat. "Please be sure to notify me once you've confirmed that the child is our missing savior."

"Yeah, sure; come on, Moony; it's high time we've collected Prongs Jr. and brought him home."

Both men left the same way they came just seconds later without saying goodbye; their minds firmly focused on the child they had left to retrieve. Albus sagged back in his chair and allowed his sorrow to surface for all of ten seconds before he forced himself to cheer up since finding 'Harry' should have revitalized him. Once he felt in he was in the proper frame of mind, Albus sent a patronus message to Minerva to inform his deputy that Harry Potter had been found and that he'd already arranged for the child to be collected by a suitable party.

He then returned his thoughts to the trap he'd put in place to lure Voldemort out into the open as he meticulously examined each aspect of the trap in order to assure himself that everything was in place. Once he'd done that, he ran through various scenarios that he could use to further spread the word of the Philosopher's Stone being hidden within Hogwarts. After a few minutes, he hit upon the memory of a particular unsavory individual whose talents he'd used during Voldemort's first rise; Mundungus Fletcher.

The thief was not only loyal only to himself, he was quite willing to do almost anything for a few galleons. It would be easy for Albus to manipulate the crook into 'listening' for 'rumors' of the Stone to crop up in the seedy underbelly of the wizarding world for a pittance. A request that would see the man selling said rumors for a hefty profit. He could also use the man to spread the word of Harry's return to the wizarding world after his long absence; something that would fill their world with an injection of much needed hope.

Nodding to himself, Albus sent off yet another patronus message before he reluctantly shifted his focus to the pile of paperwork requiring his attention. Sometimes, he wondered if holding three prominent positions within his society was truly worth the sheer volume of paperwork any one of those positions generated. Despite his misgivings, Albus knew he'd never willingly resign from even one of his positions; each one of them was far too important.

He needed to remain at Hogwarts in order to protect their world's future and keep an eye on those individuals with darker leanings. He needed to retain his position as the Chief Warlock of the Wizengamot for pretty much the same reason; though that was so he could keep an eye on those individuals that had already graduated and to prevent the Ministry from becoming too corrupted. And it would not due to relinquish his position as the Supreme Mugwump of the International Confederation of Wizards lest he lose access to the outside contacts that his position there afforded him.

Thankfully, he had assistants in each position that were more than capable of handling the bulk of the paperwork or he'd never get anything done.

Several hours later, a ghostly silver dog bounded into Albus's office and promptly jumped up onto Albus's desk as it announced in Sirius's voice, "The goblins and the healers have both confirmed it, Albus; the boy really is Harry! I've taken my godson into custody and Remus is fixing it so the muggles will not question us taking him away. We're at St. Mungo's right now, they want to keep Harry over night to make certain he's okay. I'll bring him by tomorrow once they let him out so that you can see him for yourself."

Albus smiled to himself as the ghostly dog faded out of existence as soon as it had finished delivering its message.

It was nice to know that at least one of his plans had born fruit.

* * *

_September 01, 1991, 5:31 PM  
Great Hall, Hogwarts Castle_

Albus's eyes twinkled like mad as he watched Minerva sweep into the Great Hall with this year's crop of first years trailing in her wake like a bunch of ducklings trailing after their mother. The bearded headmaster inevitably felt his eyes drawn to a nervous waif with pitch-black hair and vibrant green eyes looking rather uncomfortable in the high quality silk robes his godfather had stuffed him into. The child was the spitting image of James Potter with Lily Evan's jewel-toned eyes even if he had not been born to the aforementioned individuals.

Yes, Albus had outdone himself when he'd chosen the young boy in front of him to take the place of the long dead Harry Potter and the elixir he'd fed the child had done it what it was designed to do.

Even better was the fact that the child showed no traces of the arrogance that was often seen in young purebloods that were raised in well-off families. The years in the orphanage (both before and after Albus had found him) had instilled a proper level of humility in the child in addition to an appreciation for the simple things in life. It was almost a pity that Sirius had gotten his hands on the boy; since the man would undoubtedly spoil the child rotten during the remainder of his childhood. Or as much as Remus would allow him to.

At least the maturity that Sirius had gained over the past ten years had helped counterbalance the man's arrogance and oft times juvenile behavior.

Albus shelved his silent reflections as the Sorting Hat sang this year's Sorting Song before Minerva began calling the new first years up one by one in order for them to be sorted. He paid careful attention to which houses the heirs were placed into (so he'd know which individuals would need to be carefully watched) while he eagerly waited to see which house the Hat will sort his chosen Potter heir into. This is also yet another test for the new Harry Potter; since it will tell Albus how successful he had been in choosing the right child to replace the lost Potter heir.

Minerva would work her way through the first three-quarters of the students before she finally called the name Albus had been waiting to hear, "Potter, Harry."

The green-eyed waif that Albus had been watching for the past ten minutes awkwardly crept up to take a seat on the stool used for the sorting as the entire hall fell silent and focused their attention on their newly returned savior. The discomfort that the child felt in response to the attention was heartening for Albus; it was confirmation that the boy's stolen fame had not gone to his head in the short time he'd been living with his godfather. Two long minutes would pass as the entire student body and staff waited with baited breath to find out which house their beloved hero would be placed in.

Albus had his money on Gryffindor House due to the modifications he's made to the child's memories nearly four years earlier.

He was therefore rather shocked when the Sorting Hat promptly announced, "HUFFLEPUFF!"

That… that was unexpected.

A wave of surprised mutters and murmurs swept through the room for several seconds before the Hufflepuff burst into applause that was hesitantly echoed by the Ravenclaw table two seconds later. The Gryffindors expressed disbelief and shock over not receiving the Boy-Who-Lived while the Slytherins laughed and jeered in response to the Potter heir being sorted into the 'House of Duffers'. Oddly enough, even in the face of borderline negative response to his sorting, little Harry appeared quite happy with his placement if the smile on his face was any indication.

Albus would spend the rest of the feast wondering if Harry's unexpected placement would affect the plans he had for the boy. By the time the students were shooed off to bed, he came to the conclusion that he'd have to watch the boy carefully over the course of the year in order to determine if a Hufflepuff Savior was a good thing or not. He also supposed that he should at least be thankful that the boy hadn't been placed in Slytherin; that would have been a complete disaster. Not that there was anything wrong with Slytherins, per se; it just wasn't an appropriate house for a Hero of the Light.

* * *

_June 20, 1998, 12:25 PM  
Hogshead Bar, Hogsmeade_

Albus wearily sighed as he walked into the shady pub his brother owned and operated in Hogsmeade Village. After enduring his brother's dirty look and curt service (Aberforth always did know how to hold a grudge and he'd been nursing a grudge against Albus for well over a century now), he took his mug of mulled mead upstairs to the room his brother had grudgingly rented out to him for the summer for the second year in a row. As he settled into the rickety old chair in front of the rickety old desk in the dingy room, Albus wondered again where he'd gone wrong.

Seven years ago, all of his plans had been on track and he'd been a respected wizard who had held three prestigious positions within their society and today he was officially an unemployed has-been.

As he swallowed a generous sip of his drink, Albus allowed his thoughts to drift back to the beginning of the end; the day his hand picked replacement Potter heir had been sorted into Hufflepuff. He should have known right then that he'd made a mistake when he'd chosen the boy but at the time, he'd been blinded by the relief he'd felt over the fact that the boy had not been placed in Slytherin and therefore was not in danger of going astray. Well, the boy certainly avoided going down a dark road but the road he'd chosen hadn't been much better.

Harry Potter, formerly Danny Radcliffe, had turned away from the path of the hero the moment he had been sorted into Hufflepuff.

The boy had turned out to be a decent student (a real hard worker) who was rather open and friendly but he lacked the charisma and drive of a true Potter. He had held absolutely no interest in chasing after mysteries, he religiously adhered to the rules, and was more than content to follow another rather than lead the rest. He was also fiercely loyal to his friends and family and he would look to them first for support and guidance while all but shutting Albus out; leaving Albus little opportunity to manipulate the child back onto the proper path.

The boy's first year had been a disaster that saw the loss of four Gryffindors. A promising young muggleborn by the name of Hermione Granger had withdrawn from the school during the yuletide holidays before she vanished completely into the muggle world after her wand had been returned to Ollivander's before it could be snapped. Albus had been sad to lose the young lady because she'd had a wealth of potential. Worse yet had been the three third year boys that had been caught in the trap he'd laid for Voldemort.

After nearly nine months of silence had passed, Albus had finally felt someone trip the wards on several of the trap rooms and he had been so certain that Voldemort had finally chosen to make his move. He'd been sorely disappointed and more than a little upset that it had been a trio of Gryffindors that had been messing around instead. Sadly, all three boys had fallen prey to Severus's logic trap and had consumed the Draught of Living Death that had been contained in the seven vials that were part of the trap.

While still technically alive, Fred Weasley, George, Weasley, and Lee Jordon had been admitted to St. Mungo's Hospital for Magical Maladies and Injuries as permanent residents of the Janus Thickey Ward due to the fact that the variation of the Draught of Living Death that Severus had brewed for the trap had no antidote unlike the original recipe. Albus regretted the loss of the two purebloods and one halfblood even more than he regretted the loss of a single promising muggleborn.

The Weasley family had nearly declared a blood feud against the Dumbledore Family as a result of the two Weasley boys getting caught in the trap. To this day, Molly Weasley refused to accept his heartfelt apologies, sent him a scathing howler a day, and hexed him on sight if they happened to cross paths. Albus had compensated the family by paying their youngest two children's Hogwarts tuition in full but that had in no way made up for the loss of their children. He'd also commissioned Severus to make an antidote for his potion but he'd had little success to date.

Albus had just barely survived the political fallout as a result of that incident. He'd also barely retained all three of his positions even if his reputation had taken a huge hit in the process. That feat had only been possible at the time because the one seeking to sack him had been Lucius Malfoy whose family had an on-going feud with the Weasley Family (a fact that saw Arthur not seeking to have Albus fired), because he'd offered restitution to both families before he'd gone to trial, and because he'd clearly warned all of the students to stay away from the area where the traps had been placed.

On top of the bad press and open hostility from the Weasley Matriarch, Albus had also had to bow to Sirius's demand to be hired as the Defense Against the Dark Arts professor due to Quirrell choosing not to renew his contract at the end of the year for personal reasons. Long used to the curse on the position, Albus reluctantly hired Sirius so that the man could keep a close eye on his godson since he no longer quite trusted Albus to keep the boy safe. After all, Sirius had rightly pointed out that it could have easily been Harry that had gotten caught in Snape's trap if Harry and his friends had been the ones trying to get through the traps.

Thankfully, aside from the scrambling he'd been required to do in order to keep all three of his jobs, the next school year at Hogwarts had been relatively uneventful. He'd been quite glad to not renew Sirius's contract for another year once the year had ended though; he had not enjoyed the headache the man had caused when he'd instigated a points war between Slytherin and Gryffindor when he'd responded to Severus's usual Slytherin bias with Gryffindor pride. That little war of house points (and pranks) had seen Hufflepuff House winning the House Cup and the Quidditch Cup for the first time in well over two decades.

The year following that had been little better when his only applicant for the position had been Remus. Severus had not been pleased that Albus had hired the werewolf right after he'd had to deal with Sirius for an entire year. Even worse in Severus's eyes had been the fact that Sirius had weaseled his way into substituting for Remus during the week of the full moon each month. Tensions had been high between the two remaining Marauders and his potions master and in addition to the continuation of the point war, there'd been threats, insults, and secrets spilled left, right, and center.

The worst had been when Severus had ousted Remus as a werewolf to the entire student body just before the winter holidays. The drama that revelation had caused had split the school; with a good third of the students refusing to attend another of Remus's classes out of fear or prejudice. Albus had had to bring Sirius back full time for the rest of the school year to handle the classes when Remus was promptly fired by the Board of Governors (under Lucius's direction) as a direct result of Severus childishly spilling the beans on that little secret.

Rehiring Sirius full time had been a foolish move on Albus's part but he hadn't had much of a choice at the time. Sirius had been furious over Severus's part in Remus being fired (therefore destroying what little respectability the werewolf had been able to gain as a professor). As soon as Sirius had signed the contract for the final half of the year, he'd turned around and ousted Severus as a marked Death Eater and once again the school had been split with roughly three-quarters of the school now refusing to attend classes with Albus's former spy.

The only reason Severus wasn't immediately sacked was because Albus had vouched for the man; as had Lucius. It had taken two weeks, numerous point losses, and dozens of detentions to finally coax the children into regularly attending their Potions Classes. Dumbledore had only managed that due to the fact that Severus had been teaching for a decade on top of his exemplary record as the Head of Slytherin. Severus had lost a lot of respect from amongst three of the four Houses of Hogwarts though and the man's attitude only grown more bitter as a result.

Lucius had used his decision to hire Remus as an excuse to make another attempt to have Albus kicked out of Hogwarts and off of the Wizengamot but Albus had managed to once again keep his jobs by the skin of his teeth. In this case, it had been the public's familiarity with the rumored curse on the Defense Against the Dark Arts position and the shortage of yearly applicants seeking to take the job after tales of tragedy befalling past professors had become spread that had saved him. The fact that he had hired curse breakers several times in the past in an attempt to break the curse had also played a part in allowing him to keep his job; since it proved he'd tried to fix the issue several times.

Even though he'd kept his position as the Headmaster, Albus's reputation had taken another significant hit. On top of that, the Ministry, with the backing and blessing of the Hogwarts Board of Governors, had passed a decree that removed Albus's power to hire new staff members. That power had then been handed over a small Ministry Committee that would answer directly to the Minister and the Board of Governors. As a result of that decree, Sirius had been let go at the end of the year (since it had been Albus that had hired him and because he'd publicly ousted Severus as a Death Eater).

The committee had then promptly hired Gilderoy Lockhart for the ninety-four/ninety-five school year.

And oh what a disaster that had been.

First, the narcissistic fraud had demanded that all students purchase one copy of ten of his eleven published books for that year's Defense texts. If that hadn't been bad enough, the self-centered man had demanded two full personal suites for his private use, a house elf to be personally assigned to him for the duration of his employ, and hazard pay due to the presence of the curse on the position he'd been hired for. Worst of all though had been the fact that the man had preyed upon the female half of the student population.

The man had targeted the pureblood daughters of prominent families; he'd lured them into his bed with honeyed lies about marriage contracts so he could deflower them (thereby ruining them) before he Obliviated their memories. Not all of the girls had been willing and he'd forced himself on a number of the younger girls. The only reason his debauchery had been discovered was due to the fact that one of the willing seventh year girls had purposefully taken a Fertility Enhancement Potion in an attempt to entrap Gilderoy in marriage.

When the girl turned up pregnant at the start of spring without any memory of how she'd gotten pregnant, the subsequent examination revealed the Memory Charm bearing Gilderoy's magical signature. The very next day, a young Ravenclaw had found an entry in her diary that had talked about the unwanted advances from Gilderoy and the long detention she'd been given when she refused. The fact that she had no memory of attending said detention raised flags in her mind due to the fact that she kept a detailed record of her days in her diary and there'd been no entry after her detention.

Another further sixty girls had been found with tampered memories when there'd been a school-wide check-up required to determine if any other female students had been victimized. Shortly after that discovery, the revelation that all of the deeds in Gilderoy's books were lies and that Gilderoy had stolen the fame and memories of other witches and wizards from around the world had come to light. The Department of Magical Law Enforcement had sent two aurors and four hit wizards to arrest Gilderoy the same day the story broke. The DMLE had also sent a pair of Obliviators to undo the Memory Charms that Gilderoy had cast on all of the girls so that they could take their statements.

Albus had been very lucky that none of the boys were checked for memory charms otherwise the Memory Charms that he'd used on Potter Doppelganger would have been discovered. That was one particular can of flobberworms that would have been particularly ugly if it was ever opened. Not only would he have the entire wizarding world out for his blood but the goblins would have been after his head as well because he would have been seen as enabling a 'thief' to steal from one of their clients.

The Lockhart scandal had cost Cornelius Fudge his office (he'd been the Minister of Magic at the time) and Albus his position as the Chief Warlock on the Wizengamot. The decree handing hiring power over to a Ministry Committee had also been repealed due to the poor decision of hiring Gilderoy in the first place. The only reason Albus had not also lost his position of Hogwarts at that point was because he hadn't been responsible for hiring Gilderoy but he because he had not prevented the attacks, it was determined that he had too many demands on his time and so he was booted off of the Wizengamot to 'free up' some of his time so he could devote more of his attention to Hogwarts.

Albus's reputation had been all but in tatters in the wake of that scandal but it could have been far worse.

Well, in truth it had been worse. It had started with Sirius threatening to pull his godson out of Hogwarts. Albus had been so busy trying to placate the man that Lucius had managed to get himself elected as the new Minister of Magic almost immediately after Cornelius's had been kicked out of office. Albus would have accused Sirius of working with the former Death Eater (purposefully taking Albus's attention away from the Wizengamot) if Sirius hadn't been so horrified once he heard the news. The only good thing to come out of that was Sirius once more throwing his weight firmly behind Dumbledore.

Fearing for the children's safety, Albus had hired his old friend Alastor Moody as the Defense Against the Dark Arts professor for the next year. He dreaded to think of who might have ended up with the position if the Ministry's Hiring Committee for Hogwarts had not been dissolved in the wake of the Lockhart Scandal and well before Lucius had taken office.

And while things at the school had, for once, been relatively calm and scandal free, things had grown progressively worse for the rest of the wizarding world.

Emboldened by Albus's sinking popularity as a result of the multiple blows to his reputation over the past three years, Lucius and the rest of his ilk had pushed for harsher measures against muggleborns, half bloods with non-human blood, werewolves, non-humans, and those who consorted with any of the above. And due to the loss of his position as the Chief Warlock, Albus had been powerless to stop it. Albus had taken their sudden willingness to openly move against those they saw as 'lesser beings' as an indication that Voldemort was finally ready to take his move.

Albus had immediately taken steps to reactivate the Order of the Phoenix so he could prepare for the inevitable return of the Dark Lord. His attempts to collect more allies had instead turned more people against him as Lucius began a smear campaign against him; calling him a senile has-been living in the glory days. The renewed negative press soon saw him being stripped of his position of Supreme Mugwump. The Ministry's new stance on those of 'lesser' blood also saw England being striped of their seat on the ICW due to a breech of the ICW's Charter on the treatment of sentient beings.

That didn't stop Albus from his attempts at recruiting more allies. In fact, as soon as the school year ended, he had sent Moody off to do a little recruiting from those at the Ministry that were dissatisfied with Lucius's new policies. While he was doing that, Albus attempted to find a new Defense Professor for the next year. His usual choices were pretty much unavailable; either because those individuals had already taught for a year or because they were questionable enough that the Ministry would see fit to interfere.

His lack of success and a complete dearth of applicants brought more bad news.

Due to the effectiveness of Lucius's smear campaign, the 'Minister' was able to create a new Educational Decree that allowed him to appoint a staff member from the Ministry's payroll in the event that the headmaster was unable to fill a position; basically cutting out the defunct committee entirely while still giving the appearance of giving the headmaster the opportunity to hire the staff necessary first. Albus suspected that Lucius had sabotaged his attempts to hire someone worthwhile but he had no proof and that left him unable to act upon his suspicions.

Even if his suspicions were wrong, it wouldn't change anything because Albus had not been able to find someone to take the post. As a result, Lucius had sent Delores Umbridge to cover the Defense Classes because she was the only Ministry employee currently available on such short notice. Albus knew full well that Delores had been chosen because she hated him with a passion and blamed him for Cornelius being sacked. On top of that, she had long been one of the leading voices speaking out against muggleborns and non-humans.

Albus hadn't wanted her in his school because he knew she was there to find a way for Lucius to dislodge him from his final position. Her approach to the Defense Classes had also been meant to hamstring the light's chances of fighting back against Voldemort once the Dark Lord revealed himself since she refused to allow the students to perform magic in her classes. The only good thing about Delores's appointment as a professor was the fact that it had lasted less than a full month before she stepped on the wrong toes.

The woman had foolishly badmouthed Remus and Sirius as teachers and the secondhand Potter heir had taken immediate offense to witch insulting his godfather and honorary uncle. Delores had taken points and given the boy a detention where she'd forced him to use a cursed quill to write lines in his own blood. Harry had immediately contacted Sirius through unknown means to report the incident and Sirius had raised holy hell about a Ministry employee daring to harm the heir of two pureblood houses.

Delores had been sacked and Sirius had in turn used the woman's connection to Lucius to take the new Minister down at the same time before browbeating the Wizengamot into sending an auror to Hogwarts to cover the Defense Classes since an auror or a hit wizard should have been sent in the first place. Albus would have been quite happy if that had been the end of it but not long after that had been he had a few problems closer to home.

Hagrid's pet acromantula, Aragog, had passed away in his old age at the tail end of winter. Normally, that wouldn't be an issue but due to the fact that it had only been Aragog's friendship with Hagrid that had kept the large spiders from molesting the castle and those who lived there meant that there was no longer anything holding the spiders back when the old spider died. Within two hours of Aragog's death, the entire colony of acromantula (which had numbered well into the upper hundreds) had descended upon the castle in force.

They'd managed to fight off the spiders but not before two staff members had been killed and close to a hundred students had been bitten. Charity Burbage (the witch who'd replaced Quirinus as the Muggle Studies professor back in ninety-one) and Irma Pince would both be missed but they'd bravely died protecting the students that had been in the library at the time of the attack.

The acromantula attack had cost Albus his position as headmaster and had seen Hagrid being sentenced to ten years in Azkaban (four years for each death the acromantula had caused plus two for keeping and breeding the spiders without a proper permit). Both of them had been fined a total of fifteen thousand galleons on top of that (Albus being fined twice as much because he should have dealt with the spiders before they became a threat); the money split between the families of the deceased staff members and the families of the children who had been injured.

It was at that point that Albus had finally realized just how bad things had gotten. He had been so certain that he would die in his beloved Hogwarts; either drifting off in his sleep one night or going out in a blaze of glory as he defended the castle against an attack. Hogwarts had always been his home and now that too had been taken from him. Even worse was the fact that the school would be vulnerable to attack now that he was no longer there to protect the children from the likes of Voldemort.

It was that knowledge that saw Albus offering his services to Minerva, who had replaced him, to teach her classes now that she had taken over his old office. It was a cruel irony that he ended up with the Defense Class instead. Minerva had only managed to not be censured in response to hiring him because she'd claimed it was only for one year and only because she felt it would be best for Albus to be close at hand where she could seek advice from him regarding her new position in order to ensure that her transition from deputy to headmistress went smoothly.

Even more galling was the fact that Sirius had been hired to take over Minerva's classes. Minerva had even somehow convinced the Board of Governors to allow her to rehire Remus to replace Irma as the school's Liberian. Albus still wasn't certain how she'd pulled that one off but he suspected it had something to do with the fact that Lucius had had to resign from the Board of Governors after he'd taken the Minister's office and the Malfoy Patriarch hadn't had a chance to weasel his way back onto the board as of yet and therefore hadn't been able to influence the board.

Unfortunately, rehiring the two Marauders meant that Severus resigned because he refused to work with the pair for yet a third year. Minerva had promptly brought in Andromeda Tonks to take over as both Potions Professor and as the Head of Slytherin House. The empty professorship for the Muggle Studies class was then filled by Penelope Clearwater; a young half-blood Ravenclaw that had been half raised in the muggle world by her mother and a fairly recent graduate. Minerva also brought in an assistant to help Poppy in the Infirmary after how easily the healer had been overwhelmed in the wake of the acromantula attack.

As a result of all the changes (both in Hogwarts and in the Ministry of Magic) Albus's final year at Hogwarts had not been any better than the six preceding it.

To start, the newly elected Minister of Magic, Rufus Scrimgeour, had reinstated the Tri-Wizard Tournament in an attempt to recultivate the bonds that Lucius had cut in his shortsighted heavy-handedness. Albus could grudgingly agree that the move was politically sound. However! However, logically thinking, the timing couldn't have been any worse what with the recent acromantula attack, the messes that Lucius had left behind in the Ministry (so many useless and spiteful laws that needed to be repealed and stricken from the records), and the large turnover of staff at Hogwarts.

Albus had had no say in the matter though. He hadn't even been invited to attend the meetings that Minerva had had with Rufus in order to solidify the plans for the Tournament during the summer between sessions. Even more disturbing had been the rumors that Rufus had intended to bribe or bully Harry Potter into participating in the Tri-Wizard Tournament for a publicity stunt (to improve Rufus's image, not the boy's). He had known it would be a complete disaster before the plans were even finalized but no one had listened to Albus.

Lucius had succeeded all too well in destroying Albus's reputation through the years.

The Tournament had been every bit the disaster that Albus had known it would be but he felt no vindication that his predictions had come true.

Harry Potter, the hopeless wallflower, had not entered and Rufus had been furious. Instead, Hogwarts' chosen champion had been Ronald Weasley while the Beauxbatons and Durmstrang champions had been individuals of little note. There had been a huge blowup in the Great Hall the morning after the choosing of the champions and the Ministry had utterly embarrassed itself when Rufus had yelled at the Potter heir in front of the entire student body _and_ their guests for 'reneging' on their deal.

Sirius had stepped in and taken the Minister to take for daring to blackmail the heir of two houses into a dangerous tournament. The foolish Marauder had even gone so far as to accuse the Minister of attempting to assassinate his only heir in an attempt to seize the Black and Potter fortunes for the Ministry's coffers. Needless to say, the press had had a field day with the fallout from that particular incident and the slue of negative publicity had not done the Ministry's popularity (or Hogwarts) any favors.

Things had not gotten any better after that. The first task had then individually pitted the three champions against a small colony of quintapeds but prohibited them from actually killing the dangerous creatures. Instead, the three young men had been required to incapacitate the dangerous beasts before they collected 'their treasure'. All three champions and a couple of the handlers that had been paid to transport the creatures to the school had been seriously injured during the task but thankfully Poppy had been able to patch them up with minimal scarring.

If the first task had been terrible, the second task had been even worse. The champions had been sent into a maze to retrieve a 'hostage' that had been kidnapped (willingly) for the task. That wouldn't have been so bad if the 'guardians' the Tournament committee had chosen to 'guard' the maze hadn't been a manticore, a cerberus, and a sphinx. Each champion had then had to face a different guardian; the Beauxbatons champion faced the cerberus (the same one that had once guarded the fake Philosopher's Stone), the Durmstrang champion faced the sphinx, and the Hogwarts champion faced the manticore.

Once again, all three teens had been heavily injured during the task. The Beauxbatons champion's leg had been severely mauled by the cerberus before he could subdue the three-headed dog with a little music. The Durmstrang champion had been severely mauled by the sphinx when he'd failed to answer her riddle and he tried to fight his way passed her. And Weasley had lost his left arm to the manticore's venom when it stung him with its scorpion's tail after he'd bound the rest of its limbs up in magical chains. All three champions had been lucky to survive the task.

Neither the Durmstrang champion nor the Hogwarts champion had been able to retrieve their 'hostages' within the time limit allotted and had therefore both lost the task.

The third task had been the tamest task out of the three as the champions merely had to face one another in a series of duels. The Durmstrang champion had been the only champion to win both of his duels, the Beauxbatons champion had lost both of his, and Weasley had won one and lost one. Based on points, Durmstrang had come in first place overall for the Tournament, Beauxbatons had come in second, and Hogwarts had come in last.

It had been a disheartening end to the poorly timed publicity stunt.

And on top of that, while most of the wizarding world had been focused on Hogwarts and the Tri-Wizard Tournament being held there, Lucius and a few of his cohorts had broken into Azkaban in an attempt to free those Death Eaters that had been sent to prison in the wake of Voldemort's downfall in eighty-one. Albus fully believed the attempt to be Voldemort's second move in the silent war that he'd been fighting since the Dark Lord had killed little Harry Potter back at the end of eighty-three.

The good news was that the breakout attempt had ultimately failed. The bad news was that all of the guards stationed at the prison at the time had been killed by the assaulting force made up of those Death Eaters that had escaped prison in eighty-one using the Imperius Defense. Albus was short on details but from what he understood, one of the Death Eaters had released Hagrid from his cell and the half-giant had fought the entire group to a standstill long enough for the dementors to show up.

Not a single Death Eater had survived; the dementors had kissed both those trying to escape and those trying to break them out. Sadly, Hagrid had been kissed as well due to the fact that he'd been outside of his cell at the time and therefore seen as an 'escaped' prisoner by the dementors.

There'd been an attempted break in at Gringotts at the same time as the attempted break out at Azkaban but for some reason, Albus was the only one to connect the two incidents. The goblins were, as usual, tight-lipped with the details on the attempted break in. They even refused to release the name of the person who'd attempted to break in or what vault the fool had been trying to steal from. Albus was firmly of the belief that it had been Voldemort or one of his followers but he could only speculate on what they might have been after.

Two days later, Bartemius 'Barty' Crouch and his house elf Winky had been found dead in their home and it was believed that Lucius had killed him prior to breaking into Azkaban for unknown reasons. Albus was certain that the murder was the work of Voldemort and that the motive had been revenge since it was Barty who had put so many of his followers in Azkaban. He also believed that the break out had been meant to fail the way it did; that Voldemort had set his followers up to die because they had failed him back in eighty-one.

No one had been interested in hearing Albus's opinion though.

Not even those who were part of the Order of the Phoenix had been willing to listen to him; though most of them did at least believe him when he told them that Voldemort was still out there. At least, the older members did. The younger members (such as Sirius and Remus) were starting to pull away from the Order due to the lack of solid evidence. Not even the failed break in at Azkaban was enough to convince them that the Dark Lord was on the move again. Albus hadn't learned why until he'd confronted Sirius just that morning.

Albus had once told Sirius that there was a prophecy tying his godson to Voldemort back when the man had threatened to take 'Harry' out of Hogwarts after the Lockhart Scandal. Apparently, Sirius had taken 'Harry' to the Department of Mysteries at some point after learning about the prophecy in an attempt to listen to said prophecy only to learn that the prophecy had gone dark; an indication that the prophecy had been fulfilled. Sirius had only revealed that information this morning when Albus had pressed the man to allow 'Harry' to join the Order so he could fight Voldemort.

Sirius had flat out told Albus to leave his godson alone because the prophecy had been fulfilled the night James and Lily had been killed.

Albus had been shell-shocked. He'd not once thought to check on the prophecy orb in the Department of Mysteries in order to confirm that the prophecy was still in play. He'd been far too busy fighting other fires to even think about the prophecy orb. The worst part was that Albus knew that the prophecy had been fulfilled – just not in the way that Sirius thought it had been. No, the prophecy had been fulfilled by Voldemort the night the Dark Lord had killed the then three year old Harry Potter to regain the power he'd lost the night he'd gone after the Potters.

Albus couldn't exactly tell Sirius that though.

Not without admitting that 'Harry' wasn't his real godson.

No. He couldn't tell Sirius the truth. He couldn't tell anyone the truth. Because the truth was that they had no hope of standing against the Dark Lord now because their savior had died well over a decade earlier. It was rather obvious now that Albus thought about it; the war had been lost the moment the Potter heir had disappeared from his home. Voldemort had won and Albus hadn't even realized it until it was far too late. It was a terrible truth.

Even worse was the fact that he didn't even have a face behind which to rally the Light because Albus had chosen Harry Potter's replacement poorly.

The boy was no hero.

He was just a no-name boy wearing the face of their dead savior.

Albus dropped his face into his hands and wept as he was hit with the knowledge that he'd failed.

The old wizard's heart would give out just two minutes later and Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore, Order of Merlin (first class), Grand Sorcerer, former Headmaster of Hogwarts, former Chief Warlock of the Wizengamot, and former Supreme Mugwump of the ICW died never knowing that his fears were entirely unfounded and that his feared Dark Lord was already dead.

* * *

**Notes: **

Fake Harry – Yep, I couldn't resist using Dan's name as the doppelganger's former identity prior to Albus getting his hands on him and giving him the Identity Theft Elixir (no, that's not the elixir's actual name – I didn't bother making up a name for it because I was too busy plotting out other things). And it should be no surprise that he was nothing like Harry because he wasn't Harry at all; no matter how much he looked like him.

Lockhart's books – yes, I'm fully aware that there were only nine books total in canon. However, you need to keep in mind that Gilderoy was teaching two years later in this story than he did in canon and therefore he'd had a chance to write another two books. No, I didn't come up with titles for the other two books though I had considered naming them Adventures with Acromantula, Camping with Crups, Dining with Dragons, or Outings with Occamies but decided against it; so you can use your imagination on what the extra books required for the classes were called.

Wizarding World – that's it, that's all, there ain't no more, folks. I will not be returning to the wizarding world again in this story because there is now no longer any reason for me to do so. However, there is a chance that I might expand this chapter into a full, separate story to further explore the idea of a replacement Harry that is an anti-Harry and anti-Hero that drifts through life without any of Harry's traits, luck, or trouble. In any case, I have the notes to do so but it'll be a long time before I even think of starting that project.

* * *

**AN:** _I'm a day late here but we had a ferocious thunderstorm pass through last night and it knocked the power out once or twice and I didn't want to chance losing anything so I left the 'puter off. I was also without internet again for most of the weekend but that didn't bother me as much since I spent most of it writing. Anyway, I'd originally expected this to be a very short chapter and to only cover Albus's hunt for a new Harry and Harry Doppelganger's sorting but ended up with an entire plot out of the blue. And as I mentioned in my above note, I fully plan to one day write out my Anti-Hero-Harry story as a companion story to this story. I just don't know when I'll get around to writing it out. _

_Anywho, the next chapter will pretty much pick up from where the previous chapter left off; I just don't know when I'll have it ready for posting as I'm stuck on a subplot or two that isn't flowing as smoothly as I'd hoped it would so I might have to cut most of what I've already written in order to properly clean it up. As usual, progress reports on all my stories can be found on my author's page if you'd like to keep see where my stories currently stand and when you can expect one of them to be updated. ~ Jenn_


End file.
